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

The programme for Government makes many commitments regarding dealing with the homelessness crisis and the provision of affordable housing. I have raised two instances of people in homeless emergency accommodation who have secured employment, which has put them over the relevant income thresholds, and who have then been threatened with being, or actually have been, put out of emergency homeless accommodation. I have now encountered a third family in that situation this week. Two people working are in homeless accommodation because cannot afford the rents, which I remind the Taoiseach in my area average €2,200, so who could afford them, and they are being told they have to leave emergency accommodation. Will the Taoiseach please do something about this?

It is bad enough we have the housing crisis and cannot deliver social housing. By the way, if there was the social housing the Government has said it is going to supply, these people would not be thrown out of it because their income happened to rise, or even if it were to rise above the threshold, because there would be a differential rent. Ironically, however, if they are homeless, because the State has not delivered social housing, when people go over the income threshold, they are evicted from their homeless accommodation. This is bizarre, and as I told the Taoiseach yesterday, this is happening in a council area run by Fianna Fáil and the Green Party and where, last year, zero council houses were built. This year they are going to get five. This is the supply the Taoiseach is talking about. This is a Fianna Fáil-Green Party council, and I just wonder if the Minister is aware of this. Does he know that is what is going on? When the Taoiseach says the Government is going to deliver housing supply, does the Minister know there are local authorities that are producing zero council houses or five next year? Seriously, there is a big disconnect between the plans, the rhetoric and the promises and what is happening on the ground.

The reason these families are being thrown out of their accommodation is because of the income thresholds set by the Taoiseach's Government and successive governments before this one. The Department has been reviewing the income thresholds since Deputy Alan Kelly was Minister with responsibility for housing. I have been appealing and asking about this of five different Ministers at this stage and I have received the same answer from every single Minister: we are reviewing them. It is the longest review I have ever seen in my life. It is never completed. What I think, when a review of income thresholds goes on for that long, is that it reduces the numbers on the list and makes the statistics look good. That is why the Department does not want to review them upwards because it does not want to increase eligibility for social housing. That is what is going on - honestly. It is obvious at this stage. There cannot be any other explanation, unless the Taoiseach is going to tell me the limits are going to be varied next week. I would love if the Taoiseach told me that, but I do not believe he will. He is going to tell me they are being reviewed.

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