Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Listening to the Minister and the Minister of State, you would swear to God we were not in the middle of a housing crisis. You would swear to God we did not have rents at record levels, house prices at record levels and a whole generation locked out of any prospect of homeownership the longer the Government stays in power. Listening to the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, you would swear 11,754 people were not in emergency accommodation. Under his watch, 3,400 children are in emergency accommodation tonight, and the Government has made a conscious decision to increase that number over the coming days. Three thousand eviction notices will take effect in ten days' time, and there is a decision to be made tonight and tomorrow, when the vote is cast, as to whether Deputies are going to give support to those individuals or whether they are consciously going to ensure they will become homeless in the middle of a housing crisis the likes of which we have never seen before in the modern history of this State, in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis.

I put that to the Regional Independent Group as well, because there is no hiding space here anymore. Every one of us has our eyes wide open because every one of us, on this side of the House anyway - and I am sure it is the same with the Deputies in that group - has had countless letters, emails and visits to our constituency offices with a simple question, namely, where people are to go. That is the question the Government cannot answer because for the vast majority of these people, there is nowhere to go. There is no rental accommodation in many of these communities that they can just move into, or if there is, it is for sky-high rents. Seventeen local authorities have no additional emergency accommodation and others are at breaking point, yet in the middle of this crisis, knowing these facts, the Government is going to decide to increase the numbers of families and children into homelessness. My party colleague, Deputy Ward, who experienced homelessness, talks about the realities of that and the shame of it. The Government and every Deputy who votes to increase homelessness should be absolutely ashamed to do that to mothers, fathers and children, knowing fine well the long-term impact that will have on them, their mental health and the development of the child.

This is no longer just a city problem. The Minister talked about us scaremongering people regarding evictions. Does he think these eviction notices are fictional? These people are being evicted, some of them in ten days' time. In my constituency, I saw something I never thought I would see. A mother and her two youngest children have moved into the box room of their parents' house and there is no room for the other children, so the teenagers are couch-surfing. That is what is happening in the real world.

The Government needs to wise up and do the right thing, and every Deputy needs to vote to extend this ban.

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