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

Another shameful statistic has emerged in the utterly shameful record of this Government on the issue of housing and homelessness. We now top the league table in Europe for the proportion of women who are homeless. The number of women as a proportion of those who are homeless is 48%, which is approximately 10% higher than the next highest in Europe. This is shameful. I have looked at the draft National Risk Assessment - Overview of Strategic Risks that the Department of the Taoiseach has produced and, frankly, I understand why we are in this mess. This document was produced in the last couple of days. While there is a lot of commentary about how we got here and the failures of the market, in all of the prescriptions, in so far as there are any in the risk assessment, and there are very few, there is no mention of social housing: none. That is extraordinary given a collapse in the provision of social housing is the key reason we are in this mess. There is no mention of the need to increase the stock of social housing dramatically and for the State to do it when the market has so obviously failed. It is in that context that I am asking if the Taoiseach will consider, as I and others have asked before, moving legislation for a constitutional referendum on the right to housing. It needs to be established in our Constitution so that there is an obligation on the State to deliver the housing that we so urgently need to deal with the shameful situation that has emerged under Fine Gael's watch.

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