Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

There was a striking article by Fintan O'Toole in today's edition of The Irish Timeswhere he is drawing upon research by the OECD to put the fiscal cost of child poverty in Ireland at something like €20 billion, around the scale of the health budget on a yearly basis. That, of course, is on top of the moral shame and human impact of people growing up in poverty and all the impact it has on people. One aspect of that which Deputy Boyd Barrett has spoken about is the whole question of homelessness. There have been lots of studies now of the psychological, mental and physical impact on children growing up in homelessness. It is devastating and has an impact well beyond the point at which they manage to get out of homelessness, perhaps a year or two or three years after going into it. How much is going to be too much for the Government? A striking thing from the homeless figures last week is that almost 4,000 children are homeless now. It is the highest number of children homeless since August 2019. Over the course of the winter, are we going to see the figure going up towards the 5,000 mark? How much is going to be too much for this Government? What would cause the Government to say, "stop, enough children are homeless," to reinstate the eviction ban and use the time allowed by that to do the measures that will actually make a fundamental difference in terms of proper rent controls, tenants' rights and building of social and affordable housing?

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