Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Some 190,000 people. This figure does not include what we call the silent homeless. These are couples who have reared their families and put them through college and who are paying a mortgage when all of a sudden the banks foreclose on that mortgage. The marriage breaks down and the family unit is broken up. To make it worse, social justice is battered, beaten and killed because the bank puts a barring order of 200 m on that home so the people affected cannot even visit their neighbours. These are the effects of the housing crisis. There is absolutely no future plan for our youth. I fear for my own kids. There is no plan for the future.

I spoke to the Minister about his rent pressure zones a number of months ago. He does not have a plan B. The legislation is certainly not working in my town of Midleton and in the surrounding areas. Rental prices are escalating and going absolutely out of control. The Minister mentioned a while ago that it falls on each Deputy in this House. That includes his own party's Deputies. I ask them to have a conscience and to think before tomorrow because these are human beings. The Minister mentioned bricks and mortar and prices but this is about families. I met a mother who has been bounced between seven different towns in the last three months. She is in emergency accommodation with her daughter. In the last week she has sometimes had to drive more than two hours to get her daughter to school. The Minister does not have empathy. Fianna Fáil is speaking out of both sides of its mouth tonight. It has been in here long enough propping up the Government with the confidence and supply agreement. Deputy O'Brien can wave his hand. Confidence and supply: there is no confidence. All Fianna Fáil is doing is propping the Government up.

See this speech in context