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

The interview with Owen Keegan, CEO of Dublin City Council, the biggest local and housing authority in the country, in The Sunday Business Post on the housing and homelessness crisis was, to some extent, very revealing, to a large extent, absolutely shocking, and, to a significant extent, absolutely unacceptable. I want to know what the Taoiseach thinks of his comments. They come as part of a pattern of trying to normalise homelessness and, incredibly, victim-blaming, suggesting that somehow homeless services were "attractive" to people because we had so many of them and they were so good. The implication was that people want to get into homelessness services. I have never met a person who wanted to get into homelessness services and who was not in absolute dire need. He also made very alarming statements about the wider policy remit of local authorities, of the State and of the private market. Does the Taoiseach agree or disagree with this? The head of the biggest local authority in the country, someone who is appointed by Government, said:

Housing supply is going to have to be delivered by private sector, even if we end up renting a significant number of units. We will only ever built a small proportion.

He went on to say that social mix is not happening because, in many cases, the 10% we were supposed to get-----

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