Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

When I put this question I reckoned it would give the Government an opportunity to praise itself, but I want to make the following point to the Minister. The Government needs to think twice about the sort of praise it is heaping on itself. Before any refugee crisis happened here, we had a crisis in our health service, our education system, our childcare service and, in particular, with our housing. When other people who live here look around them and blame the refugees because they can and fail to look up and blame the Government, we have a problem. It is the Government that is to blame. A woman stood up at a public meeting in Ballyfermot and said to the people who had attacked refugees or were giving out about them that she had been on the housing list for 15 years and no refugee was to blame for that. She said that was the fault of the Government. There are 160,000 vacant homes in this country and the Government has made no move to refurbish, claim or open them. If people who are homeless or sick complain about refugees, it is a problem the Government has to answer to. The problem I have with what the Deputies argue is that they feed into a racist and ugly narrative that is about in our society. I am calling on communities in the run-up to Christmas to open their arms to these people and to make sure they are made to feel welcome. They should not blame refugees and should learn the facts about what is happening on the planet and about what this Government has done and continues to do to this society in the third-richest country on the planet.

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