Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

The old saying, "Not in my back yard", applies in this context. It is sickening and in no small way ironic that the House should debate this motion on a day when homeless statistics were published showing that the problem is not being solved. This will not come as a surprise to most people.

Increasingly, Departments and business premises are taking measures to prevent homeless people from finding some semblance of shelter when they cannot secure a hostel place. Some may not feel safe using a hostel, which is very much an issue. Those of us who woke up during the night to the sound of torrential rain will not have been surprised by reports of flooding this morning and will find it hard to reconcile this with people being denied the possibility of finding a degree of shelter outdoors last night. While I sympathise with some small business owners who have health and safety concerns and must try to open their premises every morning, I find it hard to accept the practice by which Departments erect inhumane structures to prevent people from finding shelter, particularly given that the growth in homelessness is very much a failure of successive Governments.

The issue is not the barriers per se, although I find them offensive and they make matters worse, but the need to deal with cases where people do not have a roof over their heads. My office is in Agriculture House. The side of the building could provide a decent shelter, although I certainly would not like to spend the night sleeping under it. However, a structure has been erected specifically to deter people who had previously used it as a shelter at night from continuing to do so.

Deputy Paul Murphy noted that Fr. Peter McVerry said dignity is the first thing that is lost. This is compounded by virtue of the fact that people who do not have a place to sleep, to wash, to go the loo or to eat are being told, by means of a physical structure, that they are not wanted even in an outdoor environment. When one gets the No. 66 bus to come into town and sits upstairs, one cannot but see tents in the Phoenix Park. None of us would have ever expected that we would have got to this stage. While rough sleeping is something people undoubtedly understood as homelessness, there is a whole range of other types of homelessness as well. It is deviating a little from the Bill but I refer to split families and several families often living under the same roof. I remember the housing rights campaign in the 1970s of one family, one home. It is shocking to think that in 2017, we are further away from what was aspired to at that time.

The homeless figures released today show there are 5,298 adults and 3,194 children who are homeless. I never thought I would see a child who was homeless. The first time I encountered a child who was homeless and sleeping in a car was five or six years ago. I remember coming in here and speaking about it. I was horrified at the idea. We have stopped being horrified. We talk about numbers. That sense of outrage must be the driving force, for example, for Government. The language that has been used in comparing Ireland with other countries has diminished that sense of outrage we should rightly have. It is not normal. It should not be normal. It is not acceptable. It is particularly offensive for Departments, in particular, to erect barriers when they are part of the problem.

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