Séamus Healy (Tipperary, Workers and Unemployed Action Group) | Oireachtas source

Fine Gael has been in government for over eight years, and it is standing watch over more and more people becoming homeless, sleeping and dying on our streets and couch-surfing with friends and families. More and more families are fleeced by big landlords, vulture funds and cuckoo funds charging astronomical rents. The Minister has said from time to time and again today that preventing landlords evicting people on the sale of property was unconstitutional. Of course this is misleading. It is completely untrue and it is absolutely factual that the declaration of such an emergency would lead to a real tackling of the homelessness crisis but of course the real reason the Minister and the Government will not declare an emergency is that the Minister is part of an extreme, free-market, pro-the-super-rich and pro-landlord Government. It is time to declare a housing and homelessness emergency and really address the great problems that we have in housing.

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