Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank everyone for coming in. I was watching the proceedings online before I came in. Infrastructure is key and nothing can happen without it. We cannot build extra houses or accommodation if we do not have infrastructure. If a person in a town or village becomes homeless, the emergency facilities available to them through the various agencies are usually based in the cities. People are being taken out of their natural environment and taken into the cities where they do not feel safe. Terms such as "culchies" and "city slickers" were common when I was growing up. They refer to people who grew up in completely different environments but we all got on well together. The person who lives in a countryside culture having to come into a city culture does not feel safe.

At Christmas I visited Adapt House, which is trying to bring a bit of normality to the lives of the families in there. I know of some people who have been there for more than two years. I know of one person in there who has three children. The family is getting all of the help that is available but the biggest problem is getting accommodation. Children are in school but when they are in emergency accommodation for a long time, their schooling suffers.

Another issue is housing for the elderly and again, it comes back to infrastructure. Many elderly people want to downsize to make room for families but there is no accommodation for them to move to in their own communities. That goes back to a lack of infrastructure. All of the infrastructure, for many years, has been based in the cities and not in the towns and villages. Infrastructure in the towns and villages around Ireland has suffered. That puts more pressure on the homelessness services because people who become homeless in towns and villages are shipped into the cities, where they do not want to be. They would prefer to live in a tent or on the side of the street at home rather than going into a situation where they do not feel safe.

This all comes back to infrastructure. We talked earlier about over-the-shop accommodation and listed buildings. However, the fire regulations that are in place at the moment mean that people cannot develop over-the-shop accommodation. It is not viable because of the regulations around fire escapes and fire sealing, depending on the businesses that are underneath. All around Ireland there are two-storey and three-storey buildings that cannot be touched because they are listed. We are not allowed touch the windows but we can have people sleeping on the streets. We cannot touch anything on the walls or ceilings but we are allowed to have people sleeping rough on the streets. Those listed buildings, many of which are home to shops and other businesses, are places where people lived for years in previous generations. We are refusing to let people move into them today and adapt them for people in the future because they are listed. That is a big problem for the local authorities. We could house an awful lot of people in Dublin and all over the country if the local authorities approached it with common sense. I am sorry to say that common sense in Ireland is not very common. We are over-regulated from the point of view of helping our own people. I believe in history and in protecting buildings but I also believe in protecting the future and the people who are here today. Our Government and our legislation have failed the people but have protected buildings where people lived previously, including families with children. The people that created the history are being protected but the people in the here and now are being told "No". They will be in the history books of the future, the books that show how we allowed them to sleep on the street because we could not move them into buildings and protect them.

Has the number of people from the counties who have been moved into the cities risen in the past one to two years? Has the number of people who choose to live in tents or on the streets rather than move into the cities also risen?