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

Any Government that cannot put roofs over the heads of its citizens and ensure they are not obliged to sleep on the street is not worthy of the name. For the two and a half years I have been in the Dáil, the issue I have raised most consistently is that of the housing and homelessness crisis. I have said repeatedly that the policies of the Government are leading directly to homelessness because they not only fail to address the problem but are, in fact, making it worse. The reduction in rent caps, the failure to mount a serious emergency social housing programme and the introduction of such measures as real estate investment trusts and property-based tax incentives for speculators are combining to produce the disastrous consequences we have seen this week, where the number of people sleeping on the street has doubled.

Every week people come into my clinic who are facing homelessness as a direct result of the Government's policies. Ann Heffernan, a mother of two children who worked all her life but lost her job last year as a result of the recession, will be evicted tomorrow because her rent has gone up to €1,300 while the rent cap is €1,000. She cannot find anywhere to live. Paul Verburgt will be evicted next week because he cannot find any accommodation within the rent cap. At the same time, people are waiting ten years or more on the housing list. What are these people supposed to do? Platitudes about ending homelessness and pie-in-the-sky plans will not cut it. Cathal Morgan was clear that what is needed is direct provision of social housing. Given that we will pay €9.1 billion in interest to bondholders next year, the Minister of State cannot tell me that we could not hold back a couple of billion for housing. Action must be taken to put roofs over the heads of people sleeping rough and those waiting on housing lists for ten or 12 years.

See this speech in context