Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I am wondering if the Government has changed its mind about passing Solidarity's Anti-Evictions Bill 2018 in the light of what we have seen in the past week when a homeless man was murdered in Cork and another person died in Dublin. We have had children eating their dinner on a piece of cardboard in front of the GPO. We have had RTÉ showing children in their school uniforms queuing for food with their parents, not only for that night but also for their lunches the next day because they are homeless. If the Tánaiste is not sickened and appalled by this, ordinary people certainly are. There is, for example, a Facebook page called, Protest against Homelessness in Ireland. It has 33,000 members and was set up less than a week ago. Some 1,500 are joining it every day. They have called a protest at noon on 5 December. They cannot understand the business-as-usual attitude here. In fact, they cannot understand why members of the two big parties cannot even be bothered to press a button to vote on important issues. They cannot understand why evictions are being allowed to continue. Only for the intervention of volunteers on the streets and ordinary people, there would be a lot of families starving. Is the Government ashamed? Is it disgusted? Is the Tánaiste ashamed by what he has seen shown on television and in photographs?

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