Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is absolutely horrible to have to hand your keys back to someone and have to walk away from the place you thought you might be able to build your family. It is awful. Those in government speaks about safety nets. They have not got a clue. To have that safety net taken away - a safe, secure stable place to live; a place your children can call home - is soul destroying. I say to people who will be evicted - and people will be evicted in the next month - that the shame is not theirs, it belongs to the Government. It is doing this. It has a choice. We have tabled legislation. The Government can support that legislation. It has a choice, and it is turning its back on those people.

I want to say something to the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, and the Minister of State. The Minister of State and I live in the same town. We have a neighbour who is a widow. She has four children. She will be evicted on 15 May. I ask Deputy Joe O'Brien where she will go. He used to work in homelessness services. He knows how bad it is. Where will she go? Will she go into emergency accommodation and put her kids on the bus every morning coming from town out to Skerries? Is that what she is supposed to do. Will she go into a hostel? Where will she go? She is Deputy Joe O'Brien's neighbour. She is my neighbour. She is one of the Minister's constituents. Where will she go? She is a widow with four children. The Government does not have any answers and unless Deputies have an answer for that woman, they must vote no confidence in this Government and support the Sinn Féin legislation to extend the only bloody safety net that exists for these people.

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