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

More than 12,500 people are homeless. I am telling the Minister of State, and he can deny it all he likes, but for working people it is currently not affordable to rent or buy. It is just not affordable. I am dealing with a family, which I might address in another question. The father works in a semi-State company. He is on a decent salary. They are going to be homeless because they cannot afford to move anywhere else, and they are now apparently above the threshold for cost rental by €1,300. There is another woman working for Tusla with vulnerable children. She has been four years in emergency accommodation because she cannot find anywhere to rent or buy. The stuff being built by the private sector is not affordable. Even the social housing we are getting is being bought from the private sector in the form of Part Vs. It is, by and large, the same with the AHBs. Councils only built 1,689 social houses last year out of the total built. We need a State body to build social and affordable housing on a large scale, and which is actually affordable.

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