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

We cannot have any further delay on this. It is compounding the already multiple injustices of the current housing crisis. Every single week, working people come into my office - I am sure it is happening everywhere else - who are being cut off housing lists. They may have been on those lists for ten years or 15 years. Then they are just gone because they do a bit of overtime or get a slight pay increase. They are cut off the list. That is not acceptable. Now, they are not even on a list where they will not get a house. They have no housing support available. It is not just that they will be stuck in rented accommodation. In my area, they cannot get the rented accommodation. They cannot afford it.

It means working people - bus drivers and people on average wages - are being forced into homelessness and simultaneously off the housing list, or not being allowed on the housing list in the first place. Two months is just not good enough. What is the Minister of State going to do for the family that came into me this week, that - because there was as bit of overtime - has lost ten years on the housing list? The decision was fought and the council said it would put the family back on the list but the ten years were lost. That was because of a bit of overtime. This is bonkers. It is completely unfair. For years, social housing was about ordinary working people who could not afford mortgages or could not afford the private rented sector. They are now being excluded in large numbers and thrown off housing lists. What is the Minister of State going to do about it?

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