Imelda Munster (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

All Members present are aware the State is in the midst of a housing emergency but I was still shocked, as were all Deputies, to hear the Taoiseach say during the week that the economy is "fixed" and the Government is now making "incremental progress" to improve people's lives. He was so impressed with this statement that he also tweeted it. This is the Taoiseach of this State. This is the man who does not think that homeless numbers in Ireland are that bad. He certainly does not recognise that we are at crisis point, never mind an emergency. If the Taoiseach cannot even bring himself to admit that we have this problem or crisis, then how can we ever expect him to solve it? Everyone here is aware that the Government is out of touch on this issue but that statement this week was quite unbelievable. It comes at a time when we are in the throes of a housing emergency extending throughout the housing sector. Working people cannot afford to buy houses. This pushes more people into the private rental market and rents continue to spiral out of control as demand increases. There are almost 100,000 households on the housing waiting lists and many of those have been waiting up to ten years. The standard of housing for many people is dreadful. People who are homeless are the biggest losers of the Government policy and its campaign against the poor. At the end of October there were 8,492 people homeless in Ireland.

Last week, the local authorities were instructed to carry out the rough sleepers count. The Louth local authority count was arranged for between 2.30 a.m. and 5.30 a.m. in Drogheda and Dundalk. The wording "rough sleepers" makes it softer although it should be a homeless people count. To the amazement of all the councillors, the count for Drogheda was zero. Every person in Drogheda can point to the various areas where homeless people are sleeping, cowering for shelter. If that is the mechanism the Minister is relying on to get these figures, I suggest they could be doubled.

This figure includes 3,194 children. That is a national disgrace. Behind these figures are real families and real children who are victims of the Government's relentless attack on the poor. They are victims of a broken housing policy and a Government that has shown no real inclination to fix it. I have said before that the Government's response to this crisis is developer led and driven. It is forcing people into private rental accommodation knowing well that the crisis exists. It has council-owned landbanks lying idle and barren the length and breadth of the State, which were bought during the Celtic tiger era solely for social housing purposes. The Government has refused to roll out a proper social housing building programme by releasing funding to do so.

Most of those 3,194 children are living in hotels. That is completely unsuitable accommodation for anybody, particularly children. They are moved around constantly and have no security. The Minister should think about this over Christmas. Does he ever stop to think about what it is like for a child to go into school and hear their friends invite one another to their houses for sleepovers or to play after school when that child knows that he or she cannot do that because they are stuck in a hotel room? Does he think about the fact that they cannot run about the house or in and out the back and front gardens because they are in a hotel room where they have to be silent so that they cannot be seen and will not be a stain on society? Does he ever think about that for a moment? This Government has been in place for seven years. Not only has it presided over this housing crisis, but it has escalated it by its inaction. It has done nothing to resolve the problem. It has not accepted that its ideological approach to solving this housing crisis is not working. It is compounding it. The Minister needs to get into his head that it is not working, and that the Government is making it worse and inflicting misery.

Last Friday, I passed a young chap on O'Connell Street. There was an icy cold wind. He was a teenager sitting with no shelter and with what appeared to be a very lightweight blanket over his shoulders. I was with my daughter. We walked past and stopped. I took money out and told my daughter to go back to give it to the chap and tell him to get soup and a sandwich to warm himself up. When my daughter came back she said, "Mam, he was crying."

He felt that no one gave a damn about him. I want the Minister to think about those children over Christmas and about every single person who is waiting to be housed by the State.

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