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

Almost everything that comes into my clinic every week involves housing. No matter how much talk we hear from the Government or how many announcements, of which there are many, are made, it just gets worse. This week, I had a woman come into me who had a stroke three years ago, is partially paralysed, suffered a septic aneurysm and septicaemia recently, has epilepsy and is deaf in one ear. Her husband is her carer and they have been living in a car for the last four months. Another case involves a woman with mental health difficulties going to Cluain Mhuire. Her child has been put into care with her mother in order that she would be able to get on the single-persons emergency housing list. She lives in Dún Laoghaire and is told she has to accept a hostel in town, away from her family support network, or find HAPS. Both of these people, and they are just two examples, have no chance of getting HAPS - none, zero. We put a proposal to the local authority that it would set up a specific team to support people like this in finding HAPS, which they cannot find. The CEO of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown just said "I am not doing it, full stop", even though a motion had been passed. Why not? If one believes in HAPS, the least one could do is ensure that teams are put in place to go out and find HAPS for people like that instead of them having to live in cars. I ask for that to happen.

Even if one does that, the average rent for a three-bedroom house in Dún Laoghaire is now €2,200 a month. Even with the flexibility the Government is providing on HAPS, it is nowhere near enough. Forget it. There is no chance that HAPS is going to work. Of the 110,000 housing units the Government proposes to deliver, 75,000 are HAPS. It is not going to happen in Dún Laoghaire at all. That fantasy has to be dispelled with. I appeal to the Taoiseach in that regard because I will not even say what one might as well tell someone who is sick, old, disabled or paralysed as to tell him or her to go out and find HAPS. It is a nightmare that the Government is offering such people. How is the Taoiseach going to get rents down from €2,200 if he is depending on the private sector? It is twice the cost of an average mortgage that people are being asked to pay. It is not just a question of rent certainty. We must go further than Sinn Féin's proposal. There must be rent control that is linked to affordability. This is impossible.

See this speech in context