Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak to this broad-ranging motion, which is focused on the changes that have taken place in recent years. I wish to focus on particular areas to which reference is made in the motion. Housing impacts on so many people. The motion calls for a major construction programme. The Government has committed large amounts of money to it and future Governments to spend on social housing, yet the programme is more limited than what is required. Large amounts of money are to be drawn down from the European Investment Bank. Some of us have been talking about that for some years. That is the way some other European countries fund housing programmes.

We need to arrive at a situation where we have security of tenure and rent certainty for people. We must provide people with a viable rental option in order that they can go to work, where there are not poverty traps and their home is their own and not someone else’s property. Rents are rising. My area is one of those that is leading the charge in that regard. Not a day goes by without me seeing people who face the prospect of homelessness. I have tried to negotiate with the rents units for increased caps on an individual basis. It is a piecemeal approach as opposed to a comprehensive one.

Politics is about choices. The Government is choosing to spend people’s money in a particular way to satisfy the housing need. It does not make economic sense to wait until it is more expensive to buy or to build houses. Neither does it make sense to provide rent assistance when a much more comprehensive building programme than is envisaged could be introduced. While an announcement has been made, there is precious little evidence of work happening on the ground.

I wish to focus on single parents who are one of the groups that has been most impacted by the cuts. A significant number of lone parents will have an 18% cut in their income in July of this year. I do not believe any other sector would be able to sustain such a cut and the group in question is not able to sustain it. A woman came to see me yesterday who was informed she would be offered a place on a Tús course. She has a seven year old child but she has no relatives to mind the child. She can attend the course while the child is in school but what is she supposed to do in July and August? It is difficult to understand the point made by certain groups that a child at the age of seven could be minded by someone else or he or she could be left on his or her own. What is happening in that respect is cruel. Lone parents are a group that has been particularly badly affected.

The motion addresses child poverty in some detail. The number of one-parent families suffering deprivation has increased from 49.5% in 2012 to 63.2% in 2013, and the number living in constant poverty has increased from 17.4% to 23%. The numbers do not lie but the problem is that behind those numbers are real people. That is their life and day-to-day reality. According to Barnardos, in 2013 a total of 12% of children aged under 17 years lived in consistent poverty. The number of children affected has increased by 137,000 from 9.9% in 2012, yet we talk about being a family-friendly country. We have just debated child-centred legislation and now we are debating something that has a major impact on the quality of children’s lives. Agencies such as UNICEF capture the extent of the problem.

Water charges are one of the taxes to which reference has been made. It is the straw that has broken the camel’s back. Many households no longer have money in reserve. People simply cannot pay. That is part of the reason so many people will refuse to pay when the bills come in April. I have heard it said that the builders are back building and the bankers are back banking but the people who are carrying the can are the ordinary people who thought they were given an assurance by the Government when it took office that the vulnerable would be protected when in actual fact it is the reverse that has happened.

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