Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Taoiseach for his response. The key priorities facing the Taoiseach are numerous, as he acknowledges, but the key concerns for citizens are the housing crisis, the crisis in health and Brexit. All of these issues require a robust response from Government. One must ask, however, why a Government would act robustly when it fails to deal with basic facts and, indeed, peddles falsehoods. At the weekend, the Taoiseach made light of a serious problem affecting our society when he stated that Ireland had one of the lowest homelessness rates by international standards when compared with our peers. He was not, of course, comparing like with like in making this inaccurate claim. Other states across the OECD have broader definitions of homelessness. In addition, the OECD data for Ireland the Taoiseach's spin team used were out of date by two years. It is clear at page 1 of the report that different countries count homelessness in different ways. The figures published by the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government do not include women and children in Tusla-funded domestic violence accommodation, those who are sofa surfing or those who are involuntarily sharing unsuitable accommodation in overcrowded circumstances. I hope for the sake of those experiencing homelessness that this was just another embarrassing gaffe by the Taoiseach and not an honestly-held belief.

What is required is not the normalisation of the homelessness crisis but the building of homes and making them more affordable. Today's ESRI report, which shows that a 20% increase is likely over the next three years, and the daft.iereport, which shows rents increasing by over 11%, indicate that the problem is being compounded. I ask the Taoiseach to indicate what the Government is doing for people and to address the fact that he believes affordable housing is in the range of €315,000 to €395,000, which he says most people in his constituency could afford. Does he realise that households would have to have incomes of between €81,000 and €101,000 per year to afford that? There are many families and households who get up early in the morning but who could never aspire to that type of income.

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