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

I also want to raise the issue of housing conditions in the inner city. Recently I was contacted by residents in the south inner city complaining about the chronic damp conditions in their flat complexes, which they have been suffering for long periods of time. There is absolutely no doubt that in areas of big disadvantage the issue of housing is desperate. It has knock-on effects for children, mothers and everybody that then spill out into the other problems we often associate with extreme disadvantage. The need to address this is of the utmost priority.

My next point links to the questions on the European Union. I was reading a report that all of us should tune into, by a body backed by the European Union, FEANTSA, which monitors homelessness and exclusion from housing across Europe. Its reports are shocking. They show there has been a spectacular rise in homelessness and housing problems everywhere in Europe. I do not know whether this is on the radar of the EU, in terms of the urgency of us looking for flexibility on the fiscal rules to put major investment into the provision of social, affordable and quality housing in the many areas where it is lacking.

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