Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State is aware there are now more than 9,000 people homeless in this State, that is, officially accessing emergency accommodation, although many more are also homeless. The excuses last week by the Minister were unreal and absurd and would be funny, were it not so tragic. The reason the Minister gave for the increase was that more beds having been brought into the system means that suddenly, there is a huge clamour from homeless people identifying themselves to take up those beds. The Minister seemed to be oblivious to the fact the people were homeless even before they took the beds.

The Minister of State and the Minister assured us that the rate of increase has stabilised. When I questioned the Minister of State the last time, he told us the figures were not bad by international standards. Can he please stop this absolute insult to the public? It is now four years since I took part in the first protest against homelessness and evictions - four years that this crisis has been raging at its peak and it continues unabated. I imagine the key reason for the increase in figures is the same reason this happened last January and the January before that. Landlords, who develop a bit of a conscience before Christmas, do not want to evict families at Christmas and they let them stay until January, when, suddenly, a huge number of people have to find new accommodation.

Just over a year ago, if the Minister of State recalls, Solidarity brought forward an anti-evictions Bill. We wanted to outlaw some of the illegal methods that landlords are using to evict people, which is what is making people homeless, such as the sale of a property, a family member moving in, or the latest one, which is renovations that suddenly need to be done, particularly in apartments owned by vulture funds but also those being used by other landlords. The Government steadfastly refused to adopt any of those measures and families continue to be made homeless.

There were some extremely concerning issues in respect of the problems we saw during the bad weather last week. Everybody will have read that some people had to be sectioned under the Mental Health Act for their own safety to be taken off the streets. I have very mixed feelings about that. I can understand the desire of people working in the homeless services for people not to die on the streets. However, we can see how ill-fitting the services must be to many homeless people's needs that they would take such desperate measures and would risk dying in the unprecedented cold of last week. It says a lot.

I particularly want to focus on where homelessness has increased. There are 1,517 families in emergency accommodation and more than 700 of them are in Dublin.

If the Government was serious about the housing crisis, a task force would be set up for the three or four key problem areas where homelessness exists. It is not the same everywhere. It is worse in some places, including Dublin, Limerick and other key cities. The task force would target those areas for social housebuilding or acquisition. Then we would not be here scratching our heads as if it was a mystery.

One company, Cairn Homes, is hoarding a massive amount of land in the Dublin area. The Minister of State could consider asking it to get on with housebuilding in that area. I will provide more detail on this matter in my next contribution.

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