John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Homelessness is not just a blight on those left behind by society due to substance abuse, mental illness or tragic personal loss. For years legislators have failed these people, leaving the responsibility of care in the hands of hard-pressed volunteer organisations whose resources were cut in the fire storm of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour austerity.

Today homelessness affects thousands of children and their parents, many of whom are in full-time employment but have been forced onto the streets due to the spiralling uncontrolled rents and a catalogue of pitiful policy failures. One hundred years on from the Easter Rising of 1916, there are nearly 6,000 people in emergency accommodation of whom 1,830 of them are children. In my own constituency of Wicklow-East Carlow, 146 families, including 240 children, presented as homeless in 2015. This is certainly not the republic envisaged by the men and women of 1916.

In the Circuit Court in Wicklow, yesterday 68 families faced eviction from their homes by financial institutions that we bailed out to the tune of €64 million, and in some cases we actually own. They feel helpless in the hands of a system that treats them as no more than a statistic, a system which sees them as an inconvenience and an embarrassing reminder of the incompetence of a Government which put banks, financiers, developers and corporations ahead of the people they are sworn to represent. The situation in which these families and thousands more like them across the country find themselves is a direct and shocking consequence of Government ignorance, Government failure and Government indifference.

All of this has been described as a national emergency, a national crisis. This is true, but let nobody be under any illusion. It is a damn shame on this House and on all those who occupied the Government benches over the past ten years. Nero fiddled while Rome burned but the Minister and his colleagues in government have gone one step further by throwing petrol on the flames.

The implementation of the Land and Conveyancing Law Reform Act 2013 is now facilitating the repossession of family homes forcing ever more families onto the streets. The priority of this caretaker Government and whatever new Government is put in place should be to protect the family home and stop more families becoming statistics. This can only be done by reforming the Land and Conveyancing Law Reform Act 2013, as was proposed by Sinn Féin in 2014.

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