Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

There are 3,826 children homeless in this country. Between April 2017 and April of this year, the numbers of children homelessness increased by about 50%. That is the single biggest increase in child homelessness on record in the State. As my colleague, Deputy Ó Broin, stated, these figures are an underestimate of the true numbers of children living in homelessness as they do not include children living in temporary living arrangements with families or children living with women in domestic violence refuges. The trajectories of these children lives have been changed by this experience. There is no doubt that the outcomes of these children's lives have been negatively altered, possibly, and most likely, for the rest of their lives.

Temporary accommodation arrangements are hugely detrimental to children short-term and long-term. Logically, there are social effects. For example, children have no place to call home, to bring friends back to, etc. It affects them physically as well. The food children eat is prepared within the home. Only a narrow range of food can be prepared in most temporary homes. It also affects their mental health because the stresses and the strains these children go through daily, because they have no home, is incredible. We saw a case, documented by Ombudsman for Children, where a woman and her two children, having left an abusive home, were waiting for two years before they were housed. The most vulnerable in society are being penalised again.

The Minister's party has been in Government for seven long years now. There are no excuses for the figures we are seeing, yet week after week, month after month, what we see is the Minister and the Taoiseach coming in here and uttering mealy-mouthed excuses in respect of what is happening with these reduced outcomes. Let us be clear - every Deputy here is directly and individually responsible for the actions taken. The Minister is responsible for all of those individual children who are homeless now and for the reduced outcomes of their lives. That is because the excuses the Minister makes weekly and monthly are not excuses of lack of ability, mistakes, mismanagement or uselessness, for want of a better word. The excuses he has given are designed to muddy the water and hide the fact that these children are homeless as a result of the policy decisions that have been made.

Fine Gael tolerates these figures and they happen because of the policy decisions that the Government makes year after year. It is interesting that, for the past number of years, we have been having a row about the use of funds. The use of investments and taxpayer's money is important in how a country is designed. In the past three years, however, this Government has given more than €1.5 billion back to mostly upper-income earners in this country. That is a massive message about the priorities of this Government. In his end-of-year speech, the Minister said that this is the main priority of the Government. That is nonsense. If it were the main priority, then the Government would not be allergic to social housing Bills, as it has been over the last number of years. It would not have been inert on the proper controls and regulations of rent over the last number of years. The Government would have been properly involved in the development of housing.

Let us look at even the private housing sector. Fine Gael is meant to be the party of the free market.

The private housing sector is the most distorted sector in the economy. The distortions which exist in that sector could not be designed. It is broken, partly due to the fact that the Government has a deference towards vulture funds and that tax breaks are given to foreign landlordsen masse . The Minister could do many things to change this, but it breaks my heart to see the Government come into this House, month after month, and make excuses for the way things are. Let us call a spade a spade. We should be honest. The ideological position of Fine Gael and its policy decisions in recent years have resulted in these cruel figures. This has not happened by accident. I plead with the Government to take a different tack at this stage. It should pay heed to policies put forward by the Opposition and put them into action so that we see a dramatic reduction in these figures within the next 18 months to two years.

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