Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Having listened to the Minister, I think he has a wonderful imagination. When he thinks of a future career, perhaps it could be as a screenwriter or a novelist because he seems to be imagining a world that we simply cannot see and which absolutely does not exist: a world where the landlord class is facilitating the housing of our people. The reality is that every weekend - I am sure it is the same for the Ceann Comhairle - Deputies meet many distressed families who have been made homeless simply by landlords who wanted to gouge the highest possible rent out of people. That is the reality and the Minister knows it is the reality. If he does not, then he has a wonderful imagination and could have a different career than administering a housing Department. The rents have led to this desperate crisis.

Yesterday the Minister and the Government passed a shocking milestone when the official figures for homelessness increased to more than 10,000. Fr. Peter McVerry said the figures do not include those people who couch surf in the homes of relatives and so on, and that we could, in fact, be talking about 15,000 people being homeless. It is a terrible legacy for the Minister as the Government approaches what could be its final months. It is a sadly deserved legacy for the Minister after his years of inaction and the snail-like pace of delivery and misaligned priorities.

Only this morning, the Minister said we needed more landlords. Is that to pay more rent subsidies to landlords of up to €1 billion per annum and to keep tenants in insecure accommodation as the Taoiseach refers to it? When he talks about social housing, he is talking about what Fingal County Council describes as "housing solutions". Housing solutions are usually not forever homes. They do not provide stability and comfort to families. While it will not, of course, happen as long as Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are running the country together, we need large-scale building of mixed tenure local authority housing to provide homes for the majority of people in Ireland. By the way, we had that system in the past. It is astonishing to think that 10 or 15 years ago there were way fewer landlords and shorter housing lists. There were far fewer people in homeless accommodation or on the streets.

The fantastic world the Minister described to us simply does not exist. As Deputy Boyd Barrett said this morning, it is a shameful situation. I was also struck by the Minister's comment that there will always be homeless people. He said there would always be people unable to find shelter on a given night. That is a shocking admission by a Minister.

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