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

Any hopes I had that 2018 would see an improvement in the dire housing situation were dashed when a flood of people in dire circumstances attended my clinics over the first couple of weeks of the new year. I suggest that the report produced yesterday by the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, which claims successes in exceeding targets in the delivery of social housing is misleading propaganda. When we look more closely at the claim in the report that the housing needs of 25,000 people have been met, we see that 75% of the successes in meeting people's housing needs involved housing assistance payments, the rental accommodation scheme or leasing from the private sector. I will give an example. Gemma, who is a mother of two children, is included in the Government's success figures because she got a housing assistance payment, HAP, tenancy last February. After her landlord pulled out of the agreement in April, Gemma and her two children, aged four and two, had to go into emergency accommodation. They are now living with Gemma's grandmother, her three uncles and her aunt, which means that eight people across four generations are sharing a two-bedroom house. Last year's statistics consider her to have had her housing needs met. The reliance on the HAP scheme, which is not meeting people's housing needs because it is precarious rather than permanent, means that the figures are not credible. There is evidence in last year's figures that many of the people in respect of whom we are claiming success are back in emergency or chronic overcrowding conditions. Are we looking at the facts of this crisis, or are we just spinning propaganda about it?

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