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

At the Joint Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government this morning, Mercy Law, the Children's Ombudsman, the Children's Rights Alliance and Focus Ireland gave an utterly damning indictment of the Government's treatment of children, specifically children who are affected by the housing and homelessness crisis, detailing, for example, that 167 families have been in emergency hub accommodation for two years or more. They went through horrible detail to outline the trauma, the stigma and the adverse mental health effects those children are suffering, and will suffer for many years into the future, as a result of the State's failure to provide secure, affordable housing for them. Has this division considered its failure of children in that regard? It is a form of neglect that amounts to abuse of children.

On a similar note, I would like the Taoiseach to comment on another aspect of the State caring for children, on which I tabled questions recently, which is that the national children's hospital, as well as the scandals of overruns and so on, will have a private clinic. This massively over cost national children's hospital, paid for with public money, will have two-tier health. We will have the public health and then what one can get if one can afford to pay for private health. Does the Taoiseach believe it is acceptable to have two-tier health in the new national children's hospital?

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