Dessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Recent figures have shown a shocking increase in both adult and child homelessness. The figures confirm that homelessness is accelerating at a dramatic pace. These figures do not tell us how many people are couch-surfing or the real number of rough sleepers. The exit of landlords from the rental sector has added to this crisis. Evictions from private rental accommodation have soared since the eviction ban ended at the end of March. Many of these tenants have nowhere to go and end up in homeless services, facing a bleak and uncertain future. The Government is not delivering social housing on a scale that will alleviate the homeless and housing crisis. We do not even have a realistic affordable housing scheme.

Local authority lands around Finglas, Ballymun and Santry on which housing can be built on at an affordable rate have been identified. This will certainly be the case around the country. Voluntary housing groups such as Ó Cualann Housing have been building and delivering affordable housing for years. However, this Government and previous governments have had an over-reliance on the private sector to provide housing. This has proven to be disastrous.

The Government must get back to building homes and increase the housing stock. If it could be done in the 1950s, a time of mass emigration, chronic unemployment, material deprivation and economic depression, then it can be done now. The Government's over-reliance on the private rental sector has resulted in unaffordable rents, leaving people with no ability to save for a house deposit. Figures show there has been a large drop in home ownership, yet in 2021, the State spent almost €900 million on private rent subsidies and leasing measures.

It spent €542 million on HAP, an 80% increase on the figure for 2018. One third of the rental sector is now reliant on some sort of State subsidy. Couples in good employment and with good incomes are struggling to pay such high rents. This is not going to change while the Government pursues its failed housing policies and strategies, which impact on a wider scale, socially as well as economically, as people cannot take up employment opportunities because there are no places to rent or rents are too exorbitant. These are the crises created by this Government and those that preceded it. While Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil remain in government, it is clear that those crises will only get worse.

See this speech in context