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

Briefly on that, the Taoiseach should start to prepare the ground for a border poll in the event of a hard Brexit and any effort by anybody to erect a border. It is a basic democratic call at this stage to let people make their decision if that eventuality occurs.

My question is more generally about the Taoiseach's legislative priorities. I urge him to make a priority of legislating to change the income thresholds for social housing because an absolute cull is happening of the social housing waiting lists where much of the time people are being forced because rents in the private sector are extortionate to do overtime on a regular basis or get marginal increases in their income that do not allow them to buy a house on the private market or pay the extortionate rents but are then taking them over the income threshold for social housing, which has not changed since 2011.

I was talking to a council worker the other day who has been on the list for years. In his wildest dreams his income would not buy him a house in the greater Dún Laoghaire area where rents are absolutely shocking. To pay his rent he has been forced to do Saturday overtime for the past year and a half or two years, and he has to do it because there are staff shortages, but he has now been taken off the housing list. That is happening again and again. A nurse came into our office recently who is on the housing list since 2004. She has just been taken off the list because her income has gone marginally over the limit. That is not acceptable. I would not mind if the Taoiseach had an affordable housing scheme, which he promised, so that those who go over the limit have some alternative available to them but despite promise after promise, we do not have an affordable housing scheme. Is the Taoiseach going to raise the income threshold for social housing to stop this cull of people from the housing list or, at the very least, could he say that basic pay is what should be taken into account? It is outrageous that marginal increases in income because of overtime that is enforced should take them off the housing list that they have been on for years.

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