Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

People are hanging coats on the Ha'penny Bridge at present. A message has been left with them which says, "If you need one then please take one ... If you want to help, please hang one up". People are so desperate and hopeless about Government solutions that they are using self-help and working class solidarity as the only way to do something. The same solidarity has thousands of people marching and assembling outside the Dáil today and put this debate on the agenda.

Each time the figures are cited the Minister automatically talks about all the people who have exited homelessness. It is like asking for the figures for cancer incidence and being given the numbers of people who have been cured of cancer. It is a ludicrous set up. The Minister has been told on many occasions about the families, their plight and their suffering. One family I was dealing with was sleeping in a car in the Phoenix Park. The wife and daughter had their periods at the time. There was a woman with six children who were using two sets of bunk beds and a double bed. They were in that situation for well over one and a half years, despite the Minister of State's guff. There are families living on takeaways and going to community centres to do their laundry.

Given the anger among the public, I would not like to be the Minister of State facing into a general election. I believe he underestimates that anger. I salute the people who organised today's protest. It is very similar to those of the early days of the water charges in terms of it originating from the ground. I appeal to them to have further demonstrations in the new year. I appeal to the trade unions in particular. This is a workers' issue and they must come out of their slumber and take it up.

In terms of solutions, we have the land. Mr. Mel Reynolds has highlighted this fact for a number of years. Some 114,000 houses could be built on State lands. We have the money. We have the highest number of high net worth individuals and the Apple tax money, if only the Minister would take it. However, neoliberal capitalism is preventing public solutions. It is better to waste taxpayers' money on the HAP and give it to private landlords. Many people are becoming homeless for a second time under the HAP scheme, including a woman I met recently.

I can offer an example from Dublin 15. Fingal County Council says that 200 children from the Blanchardstown area will be in bed and breakfast accommodation over Christmas. That is a gross underestimate but, even so, it is an appalling figure. Why is that happening at a time when Fingal County Council has 90 acres of land sitting empty and undeveloped in Damastown? Our councillors and I put forward a plan. The council has agreed to build on the land, but nothing has happened. Why is that? The Minister of State says there are buckets of money available if people need it. Why has the Church Field site, as the council now calls it, not been built on yet? Why is the council saying it will start with 70 houses? What is happening now is that 20 houses are being built here and ten houses are built there. When I was growing up, one lived on a council estate of 400 houses. There was none of this 20 here and 20 there.

We must see public homes being built on public lands. It will not happen under this Government as obviously it is in its dying days. There must be a water charges or repeal the eighth amendment style movement to force Fianna Fáil - it has the same policy and all its spokesman could talk about was Airbnb, which is a little embarrassing - and Fine Gael to build public homes. It is the obvious solution.

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