Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I am sure the Taoiseach, like the rest of us, read with horror about the fate of a woman who showed up at the Rotunda Hospital having given birth to stillborn twins and who was in homeless accommodation. Where lies the promise the Government made to have everyone out of emergency accommodation by last summer and what research is the Government doing on the number of pregnant women in homeless accommodation? The #MyNameIs campaign said: "We have spoken about the indignity of treating children as just statistics, but it appears that newborns born into homelessness [do] not even mak[e] it as ... a statistic." The Government does not even keep records. The Depaul charity said 27 pregnant women were sleeping in its homeless accommodation last year. It spoke about these women getting up and walking the streets and having to give birth not knowing what their newborn child would face. I have seen people who have had this experience. There are 18 in the Dublin north-central area affected by homelessness and five born into homelessness. This is an outrage.

No one can say what caused this incident to happen, but if a woman is pregnant and cannot access fresh food and water and is living under stress, she will have problems with her pregnancy.

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