Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

He can discuss acquisitions, targets, €35 million and so on but the facts speak for themselves. The number of people, including families and children who have been forced into homelessness is increasing weekly. The figure for families is now 1,800 and has been increasing monthly. The situation has continuously worsened since the Minister entered into government. There were 96,000 households on the housing list then. Now, there are 130,000. It is a disaster. It is heartbreaking to see families with kids coming to one's clinic on Monday mornings in dire situations and not knowing what to do, where they will sleep and whether they will ever have permanent roofs over their heads again. Yet the Minister continues to justify his actions and plans.

The Minister mentioned the Social Housing Strategy 2020 again. He keeps claiming that this plan will change everything and deliver. Let me tell him how it will play out in my area of Dún Laoghaire, where 6,000 households are on the housing list compared with the approximately 3,000 who were on it when the Minister entered office. The figure has almost doubled but the strategy's target is 681 houses by 2017. That is 681 against a list-----

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