Imelda Munster (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We have 90,000 people languishing on housing waiting lists across the State, including over 4,000 in my home county of Louth. The Minister and his party have been in government for the last seven years and they have presided over it all. In that time the only thing they can rightly claim credit for is the fact they allowed a housing crisis to escalate into a full-blown housing emergency. They have opted to go for Mickey Mouse options, for half-baked options, so long as they were developer led and developer driven. In doing that, they have prolonged and compounded the misery and uncertainty of homelessness and they have point-blank refused to accept that, unless there is a proper rollout of a State-wide, State-funded social and affordable housing building programme, they are not going to resolve this crisis. Because of their refusal to do that, the misery, the uncertainty and the sheer inhumanity of homelessness continues.

I can only surmise that the Minister is comfortable with people sleeping in doorways and under bridges, covered in cardboard for shelter, in cities and towns right across this State. He is also comfortable with four generations of one family living under one roof. He is also comfortable with tenants receiving eviction notices on an almost daily basis from greedy landlords seeking to exploit this emergency. He is also comfortable with the fact that younger generations have resigned themselves to the fact they might never be able to afford to buy their own home because few or no affordable homes are being built. All of this sits very comfortably with the Minister and his ilk.

I say this for the reason that, just last week, yet again, the Minister opposed a Bill calling for the constitutional right to housing, despite the fact 81 other countries have that right enshrined in law. If the Minister does not act, if he does not do what needs to be done in rolling out a proper social housing building programme to bring an end to the misery and inhumanity caused by homelessness, I guarantee that, at some stage in his life, it will come back to haunt him.

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