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

The soap opera of the leadership struggle within Fine Gael seems to be preoccupying media debate during the past week. Frankly, it is lost on me and I imagine it is lost on large numbers of people who are concerned about having a roof, or not having a roof, over their heads. It is part of the long litany of people coming in to my clinic in dire circumstances day in, day out and week in, week out. I want an answer from the Taoiseach about what I should say to these people. I am fed up talking about this for the past five years.

This week a mother of two children came to me. She is trying to overcome addiction issues and she is clean. Yet the emergency services tried to shove her back into emergency accommodation in town where there are active drug users. Instead of going in to that environment, she is now elsewhere. We mentioned Luggala earlier. I will not say exactly where the woman is, but she is camping in a national park in the Wicklow Mountains rather than going into the hostels in town provided by the emergency services and the local authorities. That is the position. This mother is separated from her children because she has nowhere to go and she is up in the Wicklow Mountains rather than going to hostels.

I do not have time to enumerate some of the other abominable cases that come to me. What do I say to that woman? I appeal to the Taoiseach to tell me. Nothing has changed and I am running out of any hope that there is light at the end of the tunnel for these people.

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