Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am happy to have the opportunity to speak on this Bill tonight. The housing crisis is not only an issue in my constituency of Cork South West, but an issue of great national concern and one that I do not see being resolved over the next few years. There are many verbal plans to resolve this crisis but little or no physical action, no shovel-ready projects, especially in West Cork.

Census figures in 2016 showed that there was an 81% increase in the level of homelessness since 2011. During the programme for Government talks, I spoke at length of a regeneration programme for small rural towns and villages and the ability to rebuild areas that had been decimated by emigration, places in west Cork such as Ballineen, Eyeries, Goleen, Kilcrohane, Kealkill, Timoleague, Durrus, Drimoleague, Ballydehob and Schull, to name but a few.

This would have helped in some small way in easing the housing pressure where 8,000 people are left homeless, 3,000 of whom are just children. Advice we gave on the regeneration programme then went unheeded and a year and a half later, such programmes are headline news. In that year and a half, how many people have been made homeless?

People are caught in a trap. On one hand, good honest and hard-working couples cannot get a mortgage as their income is too low yet on the other, they are not eligible to go on the housing list as their income is too high. Rents are rising at an extraordinary rate throughout many parts of west Cork, where HAP payments and rent allowance are falling far short of what is being sought. Furthermore, far too many landlords are refusing to accept HAP, a practice which must be stamped out immediately.

Numerous people call to my constituency clinics every weekend, as they will to those of other Deputies, who have either lost their homes or are on the verge of such, with unscrupulous banks putting families under huge pressure. This stress is adding to the high levels of poor mental health in the country.

I do not envy the Minister's task in trying to turn this crisis around but if his Government fails to listen to the advice of the people on the ground, I fear to think what the future holds for homeless people.

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