Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Last week, the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government published its homelessness figures for December, and it revealed that for the first time more than 7,000 citizens are dependent on emergency accommodation funded by the Department. In December, 4,643 adults were in emergency accommodation, which was an increase of 207 on the previous month. The number of families remained at 1,105 and the number of children was 2,505. This is an emergency and crisis, and is totally and absolutely unacceptable.

We have a rehash and launch and relaunch of action plans. The action plan for housing promised there would be an expanded and accelerated rapid build housing programme to deliver 1,500 social housing units to those in need. Only 22 were built and occupied in 2016. According to CSO statistics for 2016, there are almost 200,000 vacant houses throughout the State. Riddle me this: there are 200,000 vacant houses in the State and 7,000 homeless people so can we not match them up? Why does the Government refuse to provide sufficient funding, even for the 1,000 houses offered for sale by AIB? I ask the Taoiseach to put aside this nonsense that funding is not the issue when it comes to tackling housing and the homelessness crisis. It is clearly the core of the problem.

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