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

I ask the Taoiseach to look those people in the eyes. There has to be a solution. They have done nothing wrong. They paid their rent, they worked and they paid their taxes. The Taoiseach cannot say that there may not be an answer because of this legislative shortcoming or that legislative loophole. If people's incomes, for example, are under €53,000, even according to the Government's schemes, they are in need of some subsidy because that is what the cost-rental threshold is. Every single one of the people I mentioned are below that threshold. There is no reason, with the €500 million that the Government has not spent on housing and that is in its hands, that it could not buy those apartment complexes and houses to prevent people being driven into homelessness. We are spending €213 million on homeless services in the Dublin region alone. The Government can keep spending money on people in desperate emergency accommodation or it could buy those houses and those people would be paying rent to the State. The Government would then save them the suffering, hardship and trauma they are now feeling. I ask the Taoiseach to give them hope. The Government has the money, there is nothing to stop it doing this and it would make life better for people who are really suffering.

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