Thomas Pringle (Donegal South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I fully support this motion, which is very important. We have debated this issue in the House on a number of occasions in recent months, all in Private Members' time. That shows the importance the Government has placed on this crisis.

The most remarkable element to remember about this crisis, and it cannot be said often enough, is that it is a totally manufactured one. It has been manufactured through the Government's inaction in dealing with housing as an issue and its inaction in investing in our people and in the people who require support from us as a society. The lack of Government policy has directly caused it.

All during the time when the Government slavishly followed the troika and the EU masters, it refused to have an investment programme. That has led to the current situation where 130,000 people are on the housing list, thousands of children are living in hotels and people are living on the streets across this city and country. That is due to the Government's inaction and refusal to do anything about it.

In addition to that, we have a rent crisis. That also comes down to the Government's inaction, it failure to do anything to address it, its failure to introduce a system of rent controls or rent certainty for clients and its steadfast refusal to increase rent allowance limits because it does not want artificially to inflate the market, as it has said, but yet it is quite happy to see people becoming homeless because their landlords have racked up the rent and they can no longer afford to pay it. The Government is quite happy to pump money into the hotels around this city to house families while they are waiting for it to deal with the housing crisis that it has manufactured. It has not taken any action to address this issue and that is the problem. The plan the Minister announced in recent months, which will take years to initiate and which is all back-loaded in terms of funding, will not deal with the issues or the crisis. It is time the Minister got his finger out and did something; he needs to introduce rent certainty and deal with the crisis in hand.

See this speech in context