Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

It is the case that 65% of homeless families are lone parents; 35% are not. They are not homeless because their relationships have broken down. It is because they are the poorest in society and the Minister, and his Government, cut rent supplement and did nothing about rents. The Minister has a rent freeze in one of the titles in this document, which he should edit because there have been no rent freezes. What he introduced was a 48-month lease and landlords jacked up the rents in anticipation of that happening. Everybody knows that. We have all had those people coming to us about that. The first thing the Minister should have done today was apologise to the people for inflicting this misery and then agreed a declaration of emergency.

I want to mention the constituency I represent because we are at the epicentre of the homeless tsunami Peter McVerry warned about. There are 259 families homeless in Fingal, according to the council meeting last Monday. The vast majority of those hail from Dublin West. According to The Irish Times, 40% of all Dublin families who are homeless come from the constituency the Minister's leader represented for five years, as did the Minister for Health, Deputy Varadkar.

In a meeting I had on Monday with the Fingal housing director she outlined that 14 houses would be built in Cappagh, which is not in Dublin West. I see in the Minister's document that 22 houses will be built in Dublin West despite it having the youngest population in western Europe and the highest number of homeless people in the country bar none. What sort of a solution is that to put in front of people? The only way we will resolve the housing crisis is to give councils money to build houses, as they did when I was growing up and in the past.

With regard to Tyrrelstown, and I thank the Minister for meeting the residents and for inviting his leader to the meeting and not other TDs for the area, it is critical that we agree that the committee the Minister is setting up examines the issue of acquiring homes that are in the hands of vulture funds. We cannot add to the homeless crisis. We need to acquire those homes, allow people to stay in them and to buy them, which many of them are more than capable of doing, or to rent them at an affordable rate.

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