Dessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We have a major crisis in housing. There are approximately 112,000 people across the country on housing waiting lists, and the homeless are obviously included in that. We need to be more imaginative in how we approach this issue. We need to build more social housing. Perhaps the way to do this is to have the local authorities operate to the same criteria as voluntary housing bodies, which can borrow money. Perhaps local authorities should be able to use their stock to borrow the money to build more social housing.

It is no use putting homeless people into properties with rent supplement because many of them need all types of supports and a different type of housing. People find themselves homeless for a variety of different reasons. Unless we provide more social housing overall, we are going to be continuing to fight this battle in terms of homelessness and the housing lists.

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