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

It is utterly shameful that we even have to discuss providing supports for homeless children. The Children First guidelines define the abuse of children as involving the systematic neglect of their needs. By any standard, the State and the Government are responsible for the abuse of children. It is an abuse for any child to have to live in emergency homeless accommodation with all that goes with it. Before discussing the contents of this motion, the first commitment should be to eradicate child homelessness so we do not even have to discuss the supports that are necessary. I urge everybody who is enraged by this phenomenon to get out on the streets for the Raise the Roof demonstration on 18 May because this must be the defining issue of the forthcoming elections. We must use this election to put a bomb under this Government in terms of its failure to deal with this outrageous and shameful scandal.

I was talking to a friend who is a geneticist carrying out academic research on the impact of deprivation and homelessness on children. He put it to me in very simple terms. Deprivation, poverty and homelessness literally - biologically - get under someone's skin. A person is marked biologically for the rest of his or her life by these experiences in a way that is irreparable. The damage done to someone's mental and physical health will never be fully undone. It can be remediated somewhat by supports and a person's environment and situation subsequently but there is still trauma, physical damage to that person's body and vulnerability to disease and the development of his or her brain at every level is affected. Every day a child spends in emergency accommodation is doing permanent irreparable damage.

Most schools are discussing the homeless crisis currently. What is it like for a child sitting in the class when it is being discussed as some sociological phenomenon while the child is living in that situation and when he or she cannot bring his or her friends back home for sleepovers and so on? It is appalling and totally unnecessary when we have thousands of empty homes around the country and when people are making sickening and obscene profits from speculating on property, hoarding land, sitting on empty buildings and trying to evict people and we fail to address it because we are worried it will impact on the so-called market. The consequence is irreparable damage to children.

In a way, I am reluctant even to normalise this by talking about putting these supports in place but having said that, we have no choice. Obviously, to some extent, school is a place where that can be done so I support the measures Fianna Fáil has put forward in this motion. I would add another one involving transport. There is a significant problem with people being put in emergency hubs that are miles away. I have a number of cases, some of which I have raised here. In fairness to the Minister's office, particular cases have been dealt with but it should never have got to this point. Many other cases are not dealt with. They involve parents having to drive from Wicklow to bring their children to three different schools, sit in the car all day waiting for their children and then bring them back down to Wicklow without being given any support for the transport. It is unbelievable. These things must be addressed and real and targeted supports have to be provided for children we have failed who are suffering as a result of this Government's policies but, most importantly, we must eradicate this problem immediately. Otherwise, we will be guilty of the same sort of crimes that we now condemn such as the Magdalen laundries and the industrial schools and let us not forget the people in direct provision or children coming out of residential care who are homeless. The State is failing people in the most terrible way and we need to act quickly to resolve that.

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