Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

The Tánaiste's reply is a description of a failure of the Government. There is a national homeless strategy in existence. The different agencies got together and agreed how all of this would be tied up. The Tánaiste has described a failure of the Government to co-ordinate it and make it happen. The fact is that beds for homeless people have been provided and they are available, but they are not available to homeless people. A person can call up at 10 p.m. and will find it difficult to get somebody on the phone, but when someone gets to the phone two hours later the person is told that there is no bed available. There is no bed available because somebody somewhere between the Minister of State with responsibility for homelessness, the HSE, the homeless agencies, the local authorities and the Minister for Environment, Heritage and Local Government does not have their act together to ensure the beds are provided.

Meanwhile, anybody who cares to walk around these streets after 9 p.m. will find where the homeless people are. I invite Ministers to get out of their cars and take a walk around these streets to look for examples. They include the doorways of St. Anne's church on Dawson Street, the European Parliament building which is just down the road and the old Habitat shop on St. Stephen's Green. They will be in those doorways from about 8.30 p.m. until about 9.00 a.m. because somebody on that side of the House has not got the finger out to make sure that the money and the resources are provided, so that these beds provided from taxpayers' money are made available to the homeless people. There is a need for some urgency to be put into this. These beds are available, but the doors are locked on them. When will they be made available to the homeless people who are lying in doorways around the streets within a half mile of this building?

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