Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Last evening, the Department of Housing, Community and Local Government published the monthly figures outlining the number of citizens homeless across the State. The manner in which the figures were released is deeply disappointing and, in fact, shocking. The Minister delayed their publication and then quietly posted them on the Department’s website late in the evening, with no press release and when media were focused on the all-Ireland dialogue on Brexit, in an effort to try to brush the bad news under the carpet perhaps.

The figures are bad news. We might have been forgiven for thinking that things could not get worse but there has been yet another increase in the number of individuals, families and children without homes. In that context, 4,283 adults, 1,173 families, and 2,426 children were sleeping in emergency accommodation in the month of September. These figures do not include the hidden homeless, those that sofa surf or those that are refused access to emergency accommodation. Every day, more people are presenting as homeless. Home repossessions, landlords selling houses in which tenants are living, spiralling rents and family breakdown are the key reasons. The majority of people coming to my constituency office are seeking help because of increases in rents and an inability to afford the massive hikes that landlords are demanding. All the while, more and more people are becoming homeless. There are tens of thousands of citizens and families who live in absolute fear, in terror of a hike in their rent that might push them into homelessness. It is a crisis beyond comprehension and yet the Government and Fianna Fáil have consistently refused to tackle and stop outrageous rent increases. The Government has voted against Sinn Féin’s rent certainty proposals twice, namely, here in the Dáil in June and in the Seanad last month. The Government’s record on providing homes is abysmal. In the Tánaiste's constituency, just two social houses have been brought into the system since 2011. Despite all the talk of understanding the situation and all the high profile launches, the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government, Deputy Coveney, like the former Minister, Deputy Alan Kelly, is failing to take the urgent action needed to keep people in their homes and out of emergency accommodation.

We need solutions and we need them now. We cannot wait. Not one more family and not one more child should be made homeless. Will the Tánaiste commit to the single biggest step that could stop people falling into homelessness, that is, rent control linked to the consumer price index? The Government could do this today if it wanted, there is nothing stopping it. Will the Tánaiste do it?

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