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

First, I wish to pass on my deepest sympathies to the families and friends of the two people who died on the streets, but these deaths, the seven in total who have died in recent weeks, and the 30 or 40 that the Taoiseach said who die every year bring shame on politics, the Government and our society. They are not acceptable but they are not necessary. That is the key point.

We have talked about the vacant homes that exist in this State and gone on to debate the issue and questioned whether there are 180,000 such homes, as indicated by the Central Statistics Office, or a percentage of that figure but, nevertheless, there are thousands of them. The Peter McVerry Trust issued an email this week following the two deaths stating that it estimates that 250 to 300 Housing First solutions would solve the worst aspects of the crisis on the streets, the rough sleeping. There are certainly that number of vacant units and many more, but we must have the determination and will to get hold of them and to make them available to people who are sleeping on the streets. That is what needs to be done. We need to go way beyond that. Unlike the comments we heard from Eileen Gleeson, all of the people who are sleeping on the streets are there because of the failure to provide affordable public housing but many of them do not take up the emergency accommodation because they are terrified.

I got a text yesterday when I was sitting in the Dáil from a man who has been homeless for three years. He is in one of the emergency accommodations in Dublin 8 and he said he is terrified living there. I know some of the emergency accommodation is okay but the Peter McVerry Trust and all the other agencies tell us that, in many cases, it is terrifying to go to those facilities. People are not willing to go to them and then they end up on the streets.

I will not go through all the requests the Peter McVerry Trust has made: the Minister of State will also have received this email. It sets out a series of simple requests which should be met. We need to deal with the vacant homes issue, to get hold of the vacant homes necessary for those Housing First places and then move on to build the council houses that can solve the deeper problem.

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