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

This Saturday, I hope we will see thousands of people on the streets at the cost of living demonstration, assembling at 1 o'clock at Parnell Square and marching to the Dáil. There will many people there, including pensioners, trade unionists, students, anti-poverty groups and housing advocacy groups. They will have many different reasons for marching over the cost-of-living and housing crisis. Undoubtedly, one of the most abhorrent aspects of the cost-of-living and housing crisis is child poverty and child homelessness. Surely the Taoiseach would acknowledge that it is a shameful indictment of the Government that the latest homeless figures show the highest level of child homelessness the country has ever seen. That figure has got worse every month since the Government lifted the eviction ban and is set to get worse still, as the number of notices to quit that are being served on families has also increased dramatically over recent months. I ask the Taoiseach when he is going to take action, or what action he intends to take, to stop more children being driven into homelessness and to prevent the damage that is done to children languishing in homelessness or set to go into it, or the terror. I am dealing with many families where the children are literally paralysed with fear because they know in a few weeks or a couple of months, they are likely to end up homeless. What is the Taoiseach going to do to stop it? It is just getting worse. There is no solution being offered by the Government, none at all. I appeal to the Taoiseach to respond to an absolutely diabolical, unacceptable, shameful situation of our children being driven every day, every week into the terror of homelessness.

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