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

Over the past year, I have repeatedly raised with the Taoiseach the income thresholds for social housing. The programme for Government makes extensive commitments on the provision of affordable housing to our citizens as an absolute priority. However, due to the failure to address the income thresholds, there has been a significant cull of people from council housing lists. Some of the examples I have include people who have been on a housing list for 15 years. I have three such cases. Due to working overtime, which they must do to pay the high rents on the private market, they are taken off the housing list and lose the 15 or ten years of waiting time on the list. They are left in limbo because their income could not possibly allow them to afford housing on the private market. I appeal to the Taoiseach to expedite an increase in these thresholds. He should even issue an instruction that people who are forced to work overtime should not be taken off the list and those who have been should be put back on the list. I strongly appeal to him to do that.

Finally, I have a Valentine's card for the Taoiseach. In fact, I have a number of them. They do not profess my undying love for the Taoiseach but are from school children who were outside the Dáil today. The cards I have are from children in John Scottus national school, but there were also children there from Educate Together schools all over Dublin. The cards, for Valentine's Day tomorrow, make an appeal to the Taoiseach and the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Deputy Bruton, to take more radical emergency action on climate change, something the Taoiseach also promised to do in the programme for Government. Those children feel he is not doing that. I wanted to let the Taoiseach know that and I will give him the cards afterwards. He might consider what the children who were protesting outside the House were saying.

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