Gino Kenny (Dublin Mid West, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

There is something extremely dysfunctional about housing supply and policy in this country. The policy can be traced back decades. It is one of commodification of shelter. That is the heart of this debate about the crisis of homelessness. Corporate bodies saw that ideology and they saw bricks and mortar as something to invest and speculate in and get very rich on. They did this not only in Ireland but across the world. Politically, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil bought into that ideology as well. Big developers bought into it and they brought it into Fianna Fáil as well. The amount of donations that were given to Fianna Fáil over the last 25 years runs into millions of euro. That tells us something about the heart of dysfunction in the housing market. People have to go without a home and go into emergency accommodation. Over 10,000 people in this country are in that situation at this moment. It is absolutely incredible that the situation is getting worse rather that better. That ideology was one of looking to the free market and not to public or affordable housing.

To its credit, Fianna Fáil in the 1950s and 1960s had a very good policy on public housing. Many housing estates in Dublin and across the country were built by the Minister's party. It believed in public housing and social housing. It believed in communities. The ideology of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael is one of the free market and commodification of shelter. This has only been compounded by Fine Gael, which has been in power since 2011. That is 11 years of power in the context of its policy. That has only compounded the issue. Until we change the ideology and ultimately the Government, the housing crisis will get worse and worse.

I was out canvassing a number of days ago and two young people, teenagers, asked me a very pertinent question. They asked me why is there homelessness in this country. I was not struck by the question but by the level of passion in their voices. Why are there some many people homeless in this country? I tried to answer that as well as I could. In that situation young people, and there are many young people here, ask themselves. They may be in a house at the moment or maybe not. They will ask themselves why politicians cannot for once sort out the problem of sheltering our citizens. It is the biggest question and issue of our time. Politicians on the Minister's side of the House cannot fix it. That is the question here. They cannot fix it. What is wrong? There is an answer and a solution to every problem. There should never be people homeless in this country at all. Once we go with the ideology of the commodification of shelter, unfortunately there are going to be tens of thousands of people in the future in the situation of being homeless.

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