Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the delegation for their contributions and compliment Focus Ireland on its good work. It is important to acknowledge that. For a minute there I felt that the conversation was becoming normal. This cannot become a normal conversation because it is not normal to have 4,000 children in emergency accommodation of any sort whether it is in a hub, bed and breakfast or whatever. If children do not have their own front door or are not in accommodation located near their own community where they can attend their local school or engage in their activities in their own community, then it is not their home. The only solution is to start building houses. That is not what we are discussing today but that is the solution. What we need to do in the middle of this crisis is ensure people have a better experience of the trauma that they are encountering. Earlier Mr. Allen said that some things need to change in terms of best practice. Some best practices do not cost money. They call for common sense, decency, manners and empathy, which must start in local county councils. We should have rooms for families who present to county councils. They should not have to wait in queues. They should not have to be conscious that their children are roaring or need feeding. They should not feel like they are on show in a very public format.

The trauma they are experiencing is being exacerbated tenfold by having to sit there, on the third floor at Galway County Council, waiting to meet a housing officer when they press the bell and if he or she is at lunch, they will have to wait for two hours. That is not the way it should be, but that is the trauma about which Ms Lambe talks and Focus Ireland has to bring in social care workers to help to address that experience. A mother might nearly have lost her marbles and lost the will to live because she is being told that the family might have to be split up into different rooms in order to find accommodation that night and they might not all find it in the one hotel room. That is not normal, but that is the trauma experienced.

It is a question of how we do business in the various county councils. They need to learn that the people in question have, for whatever reason, fallen on hard times. None of us has today discussed the elephant in the room, that this housing accommodation issue is not going to end because we are still coming to terms with the banking crisis. We are coming to the end of the ten-year debt period for our fixed-term loans which are just starting to mature. It is a fact that more people will become homeless in the foreseeable future. How we do business in the various councils, therefore, needs to improve.

We need to hear from Focus Ireland on best practice in how people engage with others. Ms Lambe is correct that we need to invest in people with the skill set and empathy required - I keep coming back to the word "empathy" - to engage with parents and children in order that they will not be scarred for years to come. That is a big statement piece by me, but I feel passionately about it and it does not cost money.

I do not know how long Ms Lambe has been working on the issue of hubs, but what does she notice? What stands out in what she sees on a daily basis? What does she hear back from case managers? What are they saying about repeat incidents and the trauma children are experiencing? At the end of the day, it has to be about the children. When we assess people for housing, they have to wait at Galway County Council. I can only talk about the position in Galway because that is my area. If a person has a disability, is living in an overcrowded and unfit house or is participating in the HAP scheme or the RAS, nowhere is he or she asked whether there are children involved or how many there are or whether there is a family network involved. It is about numbers. We do not hear the voice of the child or the whole community. What is Ms Lambe finding? What does her research show?