Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We have had a housing crisis for more than a decade and this Government has been in office for three years yet only now a report comes to Cabinet stating what everybody already knew, which is that thousands of homes could be built on public land. For years, we have said that building public homes on public land is the answer to the housing crisis. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil turned a deaf ear every time. They did not want to know.

The shocking thing about the report arriving at Cabinet today is that it does not present solutions for the current generation desperately seeking to put an affordable roof over their heads. It is about building houses in the future. You would imagine that we did not have a housing crisis now, today. There is no plan, no pace and no real attempt to get the job done. The truth is that, given the incompetence and inertia of this Government, it is our children and grandchildren who will be lucky enough to see these houses built, if they materialise at all.

This report lands on the Taoiseach's desk three days before he lifts a vital protection for renters, three days before he escalates a housing crisis that is already out of control and three days before he and his Government choose to increase homelessness. The clock is ticking for those whose eviction notices kick in from 1 April but the Government's decision intensifies the fear of receiving that dreaded call from the landlord for all renters. Yesterday, I met people in my own neighbourhood whose eviction notices come into force on Saturday. The fear of eviction goes to bed with them every night and they wake with that same dread every single morning. They will be out in a few weeks’ time and they have nowhere to go. The Taoiseach made this decision without putting any adequate plan in place and he still refuses to answer the fundamental question of where these people are to go.

We know that official homelessness figures represent only the tip of the iceberg. The full tragic story of homelessness is found in people moving back into the box rooms of their parents’ home, in people couch surfing in friends' houses and in young people emigrating to get a decent chance of a better life. Families are being broken up and scattered across the homes of the wider family, children are being separated from their mams and dads and brothers and sisters are being separated from each other. That is the story of Ireland’s hidden homeless. It is the traumatising experience to which the Taoiseach will consign thousands more by lifting the eviction ban.

It does not have to be this way, however. We have one last chance to stop thousands from losing their homes. The Sinn Féin Bill before the Dáil tonight will extend the eviction ban. It will buy time for the Taoiseach's Government to use emergency powers to ramp up the delivery of social and affordable homes and, crucially, to expand emergency accommodation. Tá seans amháin fágtha againn chun stop a chur leis na mílte daoine a bheith curtha amach as a dtithe. Impím ar gach Teachta Dála tacaíocht a thabhairt do Bhille Shinn Féin a shíneoidh amach an cosc ar dhíshealbhú agus ar an Rialtas an t-am sin a úsáid chun cur le táirgeacht tithe sóisialta agus tithe ar phraghas réasúnta.

I am asking every TD to back this Bill. Do not vote to evict your own constituents into homelessness.

It should not come to a vote and so I ask the Taoiseach to reverse his decision before it is too late. I ask the Taoiseach to keep this vital protection for renters in place until January of next year.

See this speech in context