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

The issue that dominated the general election that brought this Government to office was the housing crisis. In the programme for Government, the Government promised action to address that crisis, particularly in the area of homelessness. It reads:

Reducing and preventing homelessness is a major priority for the Government. We recognise the particular challenges of homelessness [facing] families.

I am just off the phone from speaking to a young, vulnerable and very frightened woman. It could be somebody else on another day because I get such phone calls virtually every day. This is a woman with three children. Her landlord is evicting her on the grounds that a relative is coming to live in the house. She will be made homeless on 30 June, as will her children. Teachers report that her children are now crying in school because of this. One of them now requires counselling while the woman herself is being seen by a psychiatrist. She has been told all she will get is homeless emergency accommodation in Dublin city centre, approximately 15 km away from where she lives and where her children go to school. It is absolutely shameful. I wonder what "preventing homelessness" in the programme for Government means to her. I would like to be able to tell her this Government has a priority to stop her going into homelessness with her children.

I am also struck by another case I have mentioned a few times of a mother who is now three and a half years in homelessness emergency accommodation. She works with vulnerable children as an agency worker for Tusla. Because the Government has refused to raise the income thresholds, she is now not entitled, even though she is in emergency accommodation, to even the housing assistance payment or social housing. She is wondering where the priority is to get her and her child, who is now also getting counselling, out of homelessness accommodation, where they have been stuck for three and a half years. She has been told she is not entitled even to any housing support.

Will the Taoiseach tell me what the Government is going to do for those two people in order that I can pass back the message? They are just two examples. I am telling them at this stage that I am in such despair that the only thing they can do is get out on the streets and march on 18 June as part of the cost of living coalition because the Government is not listening. If that is not true, will the Taoiseach give me advice I can give to them about how they can get out of being homeless?

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