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

The programme for Government states "Our approach to governing will be clearly seen in how we address the issues of housing and homelessness." Given that was stated as a priority and a key indicator of what the Government is like, what are we to make the series of statements coming from the Taoiseach, the Minister of State, Deputy English, the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, Conor Skehan of the Housing Agency and Eileen Gleeson of the Dublin Region Homeless Executive? Quite frankly, they were scandalous and insulting statements which have tried to normalise, minimise or downplay the scale of the housing and homelessness emergency, or even worse, in the case of Eileen Gleeson, blame the homeless themselves. Her shocking comments referred to homelessness being a result of "years of bad behaviour" and chaotic lifestyle". The Minister of State, Deputy English, suggested that those who talk too much about housing and homelessness are doing damage to our reputation.

In so far as the Government has power over these agencies, is it going to repudiate these kind of comments? It should denounce them for what they are, namely, shameful attempts to cover up, downplay or normalise the housing crisis. Will the Taoiseach acknowledge that as the housing analyst Mel Reynolds has suggested, the real problem is the refusal of the Government to build council housing on the thousands of hectares of publicly owned land? There is an aversion to building council houses. The Government is playing with figures to try to suggest more houses are being built than is actually the case. The evidence shows that what is actually happening is the Government is refusing to use public land to build council housing.

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