Pat Casey (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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In preparation for this meeting, my intention was to try to focus on the number of people exiting and entering homelessness and trying to get an average. I then tried to look at what the impact of not having it off-balance sheet would have on the delivery of housing over the next five years. I also wish to focus on how we have failed to convert vacant private housing into use. In addition, I wished to focus on the 59-week process and the four-stage process. I got the quarter 2 report for 2019. I previously expressed my frustration at having to copy it in PDF and convert it to Excel, which is still not available. I was working my way through it in detail to ask specific questions. I sat at the computer last night and tried to get the Minister's opening statement, and I saw that, lo and behold, the report for quarter 3 of 2019 has been issued. The report contains 99 pages of data, so I decided I had had enough. I sat through 12 meetings on Rebuilding Ireland and 150 committee meetings.

When I went home I asked myself what it is all about. We are coming up to the Christmas period. While listening to the radio on the way to the meeting I heard it said that it is the end of the decade. A colleague asked me how this Dáil would be viewed in 20 years. I was at a commemoration in Castletown last week for Liam Mellows, where we spoke about principles and the Proclamation. We spoke about the extract in the Proclamation of cherishing all the children of the nation equally. When we look back at the period of this Dáil and previous Dáileanna, we will look at this as a decade of neglect of the children of Ireland. Homelessness is at the heart of that neglect.

I am not a parent. I do not know what it is like to have children in this country, but I know about children from my life experiences and from people coming into my offices. I think of Pam, whose son Ryan is seriously ill, and the efforts she makes to protect her son and to try to provide a quality of life for the rest of her family, but the State keeps making it harder. I think of my own niece who went through a serious problem with self-harm, and but for the fact that she could afford private healthcare, she would have been left abandoned, because children are waiting 18 months for assessment. Jigsaw has offered for the past four years to locate in Wicklow to deal with mental health issues but we cannot bloody well find it a premises. A total of 215,000 are waiting for healthcare. Families contact me every second day of the week who do not know where their children are going to go to school.

My own hotel has been used for homeless families. I have seen them coming in and out. I have seen children who just do not want to engage because it is not a happy experience to go to a hotel. I have seen the other side in the hotel as well where staff are asked to intervene in families with complex needs but they are not trained to do that. Members of my family, who are not with us today, would have been very proud that I was elected to this Dáil, but I do not know whether they would be as proud of the effort I have made in trying to deal with situations like child homelessness. I regret to say to the Minister that, politically, he will have to take the blame for this, but we are all involved in it, every single one of us, and it is up to us all to try to address this. We are all on the bus. The Minister might be driving it and choosing the gears but, equally, we all have responsibilities. Solutions have been provided and they have been ignored. The committee has provided the Minister with detailed reports and we have made suggestions ourselves, but it has to be about getting away from the noise of all the data, all the reports, all the spin, all the launches and focusing back on what it must be about, namely, child homelessness. Let us not make another decade like the one we had for the last decade. I am sorry, Chairman, but I am a bit frustrated.