Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

In relation to children, I refer to a couple who have three children aged 16, 14 and ten years old. They have been homeless for two years. They do not want to bring their young children into homeless accommodation because they are terrified for them, particularly for their daughter, who they think would be very vulnerable. The children, as a result, are now staying their 72-year-old grandmother on camp beds and in the grandmother's bed. The parents are couch surfing separately and the family has been separated for over a year. There are no available properties and they are being overlooked by homeless services because they are “not engaging with homeless services”. In other words, they do not want to go into hostels with their family. To me, that case highlights a serious problem in terms of child homelessness.

We cannot put families into the situation whereby the only option available to them is to bring children into completely unsuitable conditions.

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