Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change) | Oireachtas source

These families are facing this crisis now. People are walking into our constituency office, and I am sure every other Deputy is seeing that in his or her constituency office, with notices to quit and all sorts of housing problems. They have been told by the family support and emergency accommodation units that they are at capacity - they do not have anywhere to put them.

Either the Government gives a direction to the family support unit to pay whatever the hotels want or demand for accommodation or it suddenly gets vacant housing on board tomorrow. This situation is here and now. It cannot wait until houses are built in two or three years’ time.

In our area we are waiting for housing to be built in St. Michael’s Estate. That was raised in 2019 and we are still waiting for bricks to be put down on the ground. When the Minister talks about future housing, he is talking about in the future. There is a crisis now in emergency accommodation. The Government needs to address it before it gets worse.

See this speech in context