Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am happy to be able to speak on this issue as well because I had my constituency clinics in Kildare North yesterday, and the issues of housing, homelessness and eviction notices were coming in thick and fast. I was not a bit surprised at the record homeless figures released last week. Housing is required for everybody, for all the reasons that make life worth living, including safety, security, family, privacy, dignity, access to education and health. When people do not have proper homes, lives often take a turn for the worst.

I want to use my short time to show what a difference a home makes by talking about a constituent, a nana, who has just got an eviction notice to quit the apartment she has been renting come January 2023. She has been on Kildare County Council's housing list for almost six years. This woman is looking after her granddaughter in a formal fostering arrangement with Tusla. To its credit, officials of the organisation have written to Kildare County Council in support of this woman and to request that she be permanently housed. Her granddaughter cried with relief when she was allowed to stay with her nana. Her grandmother, though, cried as well. She had already lost the chance to look after her two grandsons because she had to give them up simply and solely because she did not have adequate accommodation and could not find any in north Kildare. This grandmother only had a two-bedroom apartment and she needed one with three bedrooms to keep all her grandchildren together. The two boys are in a lovely foster home, but they are losing the chance to be reared by their nana, who adores them and who they adore in turn, and to grow up with their sister simply because of their nana's housing situation.

Think of the lost years in those children's lives, all the love, security, happiness and family bonding that they are losing out on because there is no proper housing available in north Kildare. Can the Minister tell me how that makes sense for society or for that grandmother and those children? How is this putting children first? The 3,220 children who are homeless at present are not counted in the housing figures because they are considered homed but they are not at home with their grandmother where they should be.

That was not the end of the crying yesterday. Amid all the despair, I spoke to a woman who had secured a home. She was crying as well but they were tears of relief. We could hear it and I thought it would be my turn next to cry because there is nothing as basic as the four walls of a house.

The Minister must stop evictions. Eviction notices are coming in at an extraordinary rate. I ask the Minister to make sure nobody can be evicted this winter.

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