Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Homelessness is not an accident; it is a symptom of a housing system that does not work. Crucially, it is important for us to recognise that it is the result of decisions by Governments. All of the previous speakers mentioned that the number of families without a home was growing, but these families, if they are watching this debate, do not need words from us. What they need is action. They need to know what we intend to do is to put a roof over their heads.

I agree with the Minister. I have no desire to rerun the election campaign, but unless we name the causes of the crisis, we will not tackle them.

Listening to Deputy Cowen, it is as if his party had not been in government for a long period. The dysfunctional housing system which exists in the State was created by Fianna Fáil. This is not my view, it is a fact. When Fianna Fáil took office in 1997, 28,000 households were on local authority housing lists. After a decade, the figure had quadrupled to 100,000. This happened because Fianna Fáil refused to invest sufficiently in social housing and refused to regulate the market. It did what it always does. It looked after the developers and the rest of us had to look after ourselves.

I agree with the Minister that Fine Gael and the Labour Party inherited a housing system in crisis. There is no dispute about this. What Deputies Enda Kenny and Joan Burton then did was to turn the crisis into a catastrophe. The Government cut social housing spending by €200 million, bringing local authority construction to a grinding halt. It cut rent supplement, ensuring a further wave of family homelessness. It passed the Land and Conveyancing Law Reform Act, which saw a tenfold increase in the number of court cases for repossessions before the courts. It then announced a housing plan which was badly designed, poorly funded and destined to fail. Every time I hear the Minister, Deputy Kelly, tell us this was the most ambitious social housing plan in the history of the State, I scratch my head, because anybody who knows anything about social housing policy in the State knows this is simply not true.

What are we going to do? We know the solutions to the crisis because they have been introduced previously. We know, for example, that we must have rent certainty and increases in rent supplement. We know we must stop evictions and have tighter regulation of the banks. We know we must increase emergency accommodation. Crucially, unless we have a significant increase above what is being proposed by the Government across the House in direct local authority provision of social housing, the crisis will get worse. What the families listening to us need is to hear how we will provide homes for those children who tonight will sleep in emergency accommodation. Nothing I heard from the Minister or the Taoiseach answered this question.

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