Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We are back again having almost the same conversation. I thank People Before Profit-Solidarity for putting the motion forward. I have looked through daft.ieas I usually do. It does not make for any better reading. There is a good sprinkling on that website of, I think, 11 properties in Dundalk and 12 in its surrounds. That is one more than when I looked last week. There is also a good sprinkling of €2,500 a month houses in there. I am not entirely sure how this entire system has not fallen apart altogether.

The homeless numbers speak for themselves; they are at 12,847. We have a figure from July of 152 homeless people in County Louth. A considerable number of those people seem to be aged between 25 and 44. We know that is not the true number, however. It does not include all the people who are sofa surfing or who have not been able to get on the housing list. We know of all the people, especially single people, who are making use of very bad solutions because they know they are facing homelessness. Do not get me wrong; I am very glad Simon exists and those services are there, although I accept these are not necessarily services many of us would like to have to make use of. In particular, if we are talking about people who have issues, and may have been attempting to get clean, the services in those places are not necessarily conducive to that. The wider issue is what we do not have. Sometimes, people talk about homelessness and street homelessness and say it is a different kettle of fish, which relates to mental health and addiction issues. However, my issue is that we do not have any of the services we require for that. In fairness to local authorities, they have all these issues thrown at them and none of the resources to be able to deal with them, even if they can contact the HSE or whoever else. That will be an issue.

I am sure I am like many other people who welcome it when Peter McVerry or whoever else steps into the fray, does the needful stuff and someone is housed, but they do not have the wraparound support services for those people. Sometimes, there are issues in respect of people with, as I said, addiction issues. This happened in the estate where I live, Bay Estate, where people did not have the skill sets and the supports were not there from a harm reduction point of view. Let us just say it did not end particularly well.

Their cases involved a fair amount of advocacy by me and others, including many of the residents.

We can speak about the eviction ban not working, but its removal certainly did not work. Or, rather, it worked exactly as we expected, and we are now dealing with a catastrophic number of homeless. All of these are individuals, so you can imagine how many horror stories there are. Who knows what long-term impact that will have on people's lives?

We need to ensure we are delivering. Next week, Deputy Ó Broin will put a straightforward case. As he mentioned, county managers and AHBs have spoken to the Government about this matter, yet we have seen nothing that delivers any level of affordable or cost-rental housing or a sizeable amount of council housing. We can talk all day about modern methods of construction, but I have not seen 3D concrete printing, the use of modern timber frames or a large number of modular builds. They are not the solution individually, but they are part of it when taken together.

Other services and resources are required. For example, there have been failures in estate management across the board.

See this speech in context