Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

The Taoiseach said nothing about the 11,397 people who are in homeless and emergency accommodation, including almost 3,500 children who will spend this Christmas in homeless accommodation. It has almost become permanent. It has become normalised. We get these figures on a Friday towards the end of each month and each time they are going up. We have seen a reduction in commencements in the past three months, with no local authority new builds in the first six months of this year in 11 local authorities. It does not suggest an emergency. The facts are we have the highest rents and the cost of buying a house has never been higher. We have lots of targets, but people cannot live in targets and they cannot rent targets. They need to see that, in this crisis, the Government is delivering as if it were an emergency and where we are actually seeing the results on the ground. People are losing hope. We could certainly see this on Saturday when talking to people at the demonstration.

See this speech in context