Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Yesterday, it was announced that homelessness had reached a new record high and for the seventh straight month over 10,000 people were homeless. Even more shocking is the fact that 70 children became homeless last month. This has happened five years after the Government finally admitted that there is a housing crisis. It happened through the terms of four senior Cabinet members and Ministers for Housing, Planning and Local Government and three years after the publication of a plan which replaced four other plans and was presented as a belt and braces initiative which was certain to succeed. It is now two years since the Taoiseach announced the "plan is working" at a Fine Gael Ard-Fheis, a year and a half since he said homelessness was being overcome and a year since he said, with regard to housing, that the "worst thing we could do is change policy." Does the Taoiseach honestly believe that having a homelessness figure that exceeds 10,000 for seven months in a row and having 70 children become homeless last month alone represents a policy which has been working for the past three years? Clearly, he and his right hand adviser, the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, have been surprised by these figures; otherwise they would not have spent so much time early last year claiming to have made decisive progress on the issue of homelessness. The Taoiseach did not find the time this week to tweet about or reference the new homelessness figures but he issued a claim that we are starting to see results in regard to house prices. How many people does he project will be homeless at the end of this year? When will the figure be reduced to the level it was when he first said his policies were working?

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