Imelda Munster (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Housing is the major crisis of our time and it is one that continues to worsen every single month. We now live in a society where the Government of this State considers it acceptable for thousands of children to be homeless. Six years into this crisis it is now clear that this is not an accident; this is Government policy. As long as the Government continues to vigorously protect the rights of landlords, tenants will continue to be exploited.

In County Louth in my constituency we have 100 homeless people. Two years ago we had one person who was homeless. The chickens are coming home to roost and the fruits of the Government policy of protecting their own, the landlords, at any cost are crystal clear for all to see. Last Friday a man who was homeless was found dead sheltering in a trolley bay in the car park of a shopping centre in Dundalk. He was sleeping out in the open in sub-zero temperatures. Just a few hours earlier another man was found dead sleeping in an abandoned mill in Donegal and it is believed he may have frozen to death. That is the cost of Government inaction. I have to ask what in God's name will it take for it to act.

It is completely unfair that people live with no security of tenure. It is impossible to plan ahead, to plan families and to plan for the future when people do not know where they are going to be living in six months or in a year's time.

Spiralling rents, another issue raised in this Bill, have compounded the problem, as people and families are priced out of the rental market. Between the lack of housing, the lack of regulation in the rental market and unaffordable property we find ourselves in this state of crisis. However, the Minister already knows about this. The question is: how much or how little does he care?

Most other major cities have housing strategies to control the market but here it seems to be a free for all. We lurch from boom to bust and back again and nobody seems to be put out by the collateral damage of families - men, women and children - who lose their homes and are made homeless.

I ask the Minister, for once since he took up office, to take action. We are coming into coming the winter months. God forbid one of his own was sleeping rough out on the street in the depths of winter. I ask him to take action and back this Bill.

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