Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Such a proposal conflicts with the policy as set out in June 2011.

I look forward to the Minister of State announcing that we will reduce the waiting list of 100,000 by providing social housing directly, either through taking existing stock into public ownership or through a new social housing building programme. That is what is required to provide housing for those who so desperately need it.

It is heartbreaking for me to meet people, week after week, who are threatened with homelessness, have been made homeless already or who have been on the housing list for ten or 12 years and are living in totally overcrowded conditions. I am weary of meeting people whose families have been split up because they do not want to live in squalid private rented accommodation or cannot get such accommodation because it is too expensive, relative to the rent allowance caps. People are being forced to stay with relatives or to break up their families and distribute them among their extended family. That is common but all of this unnecessary suffering and injustice could be resolved.

I ask the Minister of State to do something about the widespread, outrageous and disgusting practice among private landlords of saying that rent allowance is not accepted. They might as well say that they do not accept poor people. It is directly reminiscent of the signs that used to be visible in England which read, "No dogs, no blacks, no Irish".

It is the same principle, as a certain sort of people are not wanted. It is absolutely outrageous and people should not be allowed to rent property if they operate that discriminatory policy. Action should be taken in that regard immediately.

See this speech in context