Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

These statements are on youth homelessness and I will come back to that issue in the second part of my contribution. However, I cannot stand up in this House today without addressing the crucial report from the Ombudsman for Children on family hub accommodation for homeless families and the harrowing accounts and direct voices of children who are in family hubs.

Before the end of the debate today, I would like the Minister to commit to implementing the recommendations in the Ombudsman's report. There are a number of specific recommendations and I would like the Minister to commit to implementing them. The Minister said in his contribution that he set up a homeless inter-agency group. That group needs to have an emergency meeting in response to the report of the Ombudsman for Children and to set out an urgent plan of action to address the issues that these children have expressed so graphically in the Ombudsman's report.

They expressed feelings of shame, guilt and anger for circumstances that are totally outside of their control. When Deputy Casey was quoting some of the voices of the children, I noted that a number of them said that it was not fair. Children have a strong sense of justice and they want to see matters being fair but because this is outside of their control, they cannot make it fair. There is nothing they can do to make it fair and that sense of anger is bound to grow in those children because they are in a frustrated situation and they are powerless to do anything about it. Some of them said it felt like a prison. They are in this prison situation with their family and with other families that they do not know and they have to all live together.

The family itself is in one room, with an en suite, but they are all in there together in this one room. One might say that was the situation for many families in the past but in the past they were in their own community, they could go out and play in the street and there was a whole community around families at that time. It was not acceptable anyway but now they are in a situation in the family hubs where there are fights going on outside.

A woman who comes to see me regularly is trying to get out of this situation. She has two children who are both going to school and she talks about trying to shield her five year old daughter from what is going on outside the door because her child can hear it. She told me that the teachers in the school are saying that while she was a very quiet child she is now becoming aggressive. That is the kind of psychological damage and scarring that literally thousands of children in the next generation will bear. We have to see something being done about it. Before I came in here, I looked at the table in the appendix to Rebuilding Ireland. The first pillar was on addressing homelessness and there are a series of actions that are meant to be implemented. This is going back almost three years. Action 1 is as follows:

We will accelerate and expand the Rapid - Build Housing Programme to provide, in the first instance and as a priority, more suitable accommodation for families that are currently residing in commercial hotels, while more permanent tenancies are secured. Units delivered over and above the number needed for families in hotels will be used as standard social housing. In addition, the Housing Agency will acquire 1,600 vacant housing units.

That was the very first action. I know the Minister did not publish it but he was in that Government and he is the Minister now. That action has not been implemented. The action on taking families out of hubs by the following summer has not been implemented either and while many families have been moved into hubs, there are still significant numbers of families in hotels. The whole supply issue is nowhere near as fast as it was meant to be or as it needs to be. That is the fundamental problem because the private rental sector simply cannot and should not be expected to deal with this societal problem.

It is a Government and State responsibility to provide homes for people who cannot provide them for themselves. The fact that families are so affected and it is so graphically described in this report has to result in a reflection on the policy position outlined by Government and defended consistently. We have to see a change. I have said many times that we have to see much more focus on using State land to quickly build social and affordable housing.

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