Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Last Friday there was a photograph of a young family on the front page of many newspapers. The story was that the young woman concerned and her family had slept in a car. There was much media interest in the case. On the same day a different family from Tallaght visited me. The young woman was five months pregnant and she had a three year old child, and she and her partner had slept in a car the previous night.

The story that ran in the newspapers is not unusual.

Last night, I had a telephone call from a niece of mine in Clondalkin about a young woman and her family who were being put out of their home by the landlord and who was presenting today to South Dublin County Council, SDCC. Last Friday, when I tried to get accommodation for the woman who is pregnant, the council said it had no emergency accommodation. I was given the telephone number for the Dublin City Council area and when I tried to call, there were 25 people in the queue before me. Eventually, I got through and I was told there was a difficulty. The council did not have anything and the staff were annoyed that I had been referred by SDCC to their office. I could feel the tension down the line as they tried to deal with the problem. Their solution was to split the family up but they had no accommodation for the young child. Currently, a number of families live in hotel accommodation in the SDCC area. Each family shares one room but they do not have facilities, particularly for children. They have no facility to clean or wash clothes, etc. These means added expense for them. Those that are on social welfare payments also face a difficulty that must be sorted out with the local authority.

The woman to whom I spoke earlier who has presented as homeless had been taken in by a neighbour because no accommodation was available. However, at 5 p.m., she received a telephone call to say bed and breakfast accommodation was available in town. I am relating these stories because a huge number of families are experiencing these conditions. Two families a week present at my office in circumstances such as this. Landlords are saying they want to increase the rents because the rent supplement is no longer sufficient and eventually families are put out of their homes. The difficulty is, as I pointed out to the Minister of State during a debate a few weeks ago, that no accommodation is available to rent in Dublin South West. Other Members can probably outline a similar story in their constituencies. There is what I would describe as a crisis, although the Minister might describe it as something else. However, all of us will agree there is a problem that needs to be fixed.

Six months ago, many of the local authorities were coping with the housing problem, the provision of emergency accommodation and so on but they are not coping now and they cannot manage the number of people presenting. This will get worse, not better, and no emergency measures or new approaches are being taken to deal with the problem, which is my biggest worry. There is a general consensus that this is a crisis and we would like alternatives to emerge from this debate. I refer to the proposal related to the turnover of housing stock. While houses are boarded up in my constituency, I do not know if the proposal put forward by Deputy Kelleher is fair, particularly for families who do not have the resources to go down this road or who do not have the skills to do up those houses. That would discriminate against many people. Let us hear ideas in this debate and I ask the Minister to come back to the House with radical new proposals. Sinn Féin has put suggestions forward. They are ways to fix this problem and get us out of this mess.

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