Michael Colreavy (Sligo-North Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is difficult to know where to begin with this issue. A secure warm family home should be a right and not a privilege to be granted or withheld by any government. I would see it as being a constitutional right and it should be a constitutional right. However, Members should look at the litany of horror that can be seen in this country. Almost 5,000 people are homeless and 90,000 people are on the waiting list for local authority housing, which equates to approximately 130,000 people when one takes into account partners and children. More than 100,000 people are in mortgage distress, a large percentage of whom are in a serious state of mortgage distress. It is estimated that 12,000 such people will end up in court and 5,000 of them will be forced to surrender their mortgages and will end up depending on the Government to provide a home. No accurate figure is available for the number of people and families who are privately renting at present but are paying a rent they cannot afford and are holding on by their fingertips.

I sometimes think it is a pity Ministers apparently do not hold clinics to which people with problems call in because were they to so do, they would be aware of the impact of all this on these people. It is scandalous that it should be necessary for a family to be reared in a hotel room in any country in the world. That constitutes a scandal in any civilised country. Can Members imagine a child going to school in the morning without knowing whether he or she will be returning to the same hotel that evening? It is impossible to put oneself in the place of such people. Can Members imagine if my grandchild or child was obliged to live life like that? Yet, what do we do? We issue reports and consider the job done, as a good report has been issued. Such reports set out what will be done next year and in the following years but always in the future. Members should imagine how these people feel when they hear the Government crowing about the great wee economy we have, about this growing economy, about the numbers returning to the workforce, as well as the swaggering about how Ireland is the best little country in which to invest, to visit and in which to live. Members should imagine how those people feel when they hear this swaggering and they undoubtedly will hear a great deal more of it as the election draws closer.

The job of Opposition Members is to put forward alternatives to bad policy and for nearly five years, Deputy Ellis and Sinn Féin have been doing that. However, just as the Government is not listening to the pain of people in the community, neither is it listening to the constructive suggestions of the Opposition party called Sinn Féin. Perhaps if it did listen and take on board some of Sinn Féin's suggestions, we would not now be in the crisis we face. This crisis was caused by the policy of the present Government and its predecessor to place the safeguarding of the powerful and the wealthy above the interests of the citizens. It is as pure or impure but certainly as simple as that. It was accurately stated in a commentary following the bank collapse that the banks were too big to fail and the people were too small to matter. The banks still are too big to fail and the people still are too small to matter. I am glad the Minister, Deputy Kelly, has come into the Chamber for the last few paragraphs of this debate. He must make sure that something more than reports outlining what is going to happen in 2016, 2017 or 2020 will happen. He must ensure this is treated as a crisis. On behalf of the Government, he must tell the banks, the National Asset Management Agency, NAMA, and landlords that this crisis will be solved and the Government will make sure those tens of thousands of people never again will be obliged to be in this position. He must ensure no mother will be obliged to turn around to her children to tell them she was sorry she could not rear them in a home with a garden but that they were obliged to go to a different hotel room that evening and that she was sorry this State has let them down.

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