Dr. Niall Muldoon:

I thank Deputy McGrath.

Since about 2015 when I came into office, we have been very aware of the move and the increase in family homelessness. We did not see it as an issue until around that time. It is something that has been created as a result of the economic crisis and the policy decisions that were made at that point to move away from local authority housing. That is why we created the consultation with children and young people living in family hubs in 2019. Sometime around 2017, the then Minister, Simon Coveney, made a promise in Rebuilding Ireland that 47,000 social houses would be ready by 2021. They did not come on board. From 2019 onward, we made the recommendation that we need to focus specifically on children and families through various Ministers who have come through the portfolio. That is the main recommendation that has not been taken on board.

We constantly hear figures about units, investment, in companies, landlords and the need for private investment. However, we do not hear talk about the children who are suffering at the hands of this crisis. The potential constitutional right to housing was discussed in two programmes for Government. That did not happen. There has been a consistent failure to bring children into this discussion. Children are still not in the legislation. For example, the 1988 legislation does not allow for children to be considered in their own right. They are seen as an add-on to the adult who owns a house or who is homeless. We have the whole rounded position that children have their own right to housing and shelter. Everything that falls out from that when they do not have it is the piece that is devastating for us. We have consistently seen, time after time, that every initiative seems to be failing on many grounds, but children are not even considered in them. That is the sort of ongoing exasperation that we have expressed within the statement today.