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

I have been nominated by myself. This Government is, as we all know, presiding over a housing and homelessness emergency. This is no accident or error. It is the result of a deliberate policy of this Government and previous Governments and commenced by a Fianna Fáil Government. The policy sees housing as a profit-making commodity and sees the market as the solution to this emergency. As each and every member of the public knows, it has been an abject failure and is spreading misery right across the country. We know from the October homelessness figures that a new record has been created: 10,514 persons homeless, one in three of whom is a child. These children are being irreparably damaged by Government policy. In recent days we have seen two reports from housing charities. The Simon Communities have told us there has been an increase in 26% in the number of people turning to their services in the past 12 months. There are now 16,776 such people, up from 13,304 the previous year. Simon also says it provided emergency accommodation to 1,738 people in 2018, up 79.5% on the previous year. Threshold has reported that there would be double the number of homeless people in Ireland but for its interventions. It says the organisation kept 11,500 people in their homes in 2018.

The Minister's Government is deliberately excluding low-income families from local authority housing waiting lists. This condemns these families to paying exorbitant rents and excludes them from the housing assistance schemes. The limits for local authority housing waiting lists have not been increased for years. I will give the Minister an example. In Tipperary, a family of two adults and two children on €27,501, which is €8,500 less than the average wage, cannot get on a local authority housing waiting list nor can they get a mortgage. If they were able to get a mortgage, the maximum they would qualify for would be €96,000-odd. House prices in Tipperary have increased by 10.8% and now stand at €183,688. They then face renting. The average rent in Tipperary is now €853 per month, or €213 per week. That is an average, so for bigger towns such as Clonmel and Nenagh the figure is much more like €1,000 per month.

Many families now pay in excess of 40% of their income on rent. Many families are paying more on rent than they would on a mortgage, if they were able to get one. That is absolutely mad. Threshold gives us the example of a three-bed house in Limerick-----

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