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

The severity and extent of our housing crisis is shameful in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, but it will also increasingly become, and is already, an economic problem. When workers cannot afford to live because rents and house prices are so high, that is a serious economic problem. It is increasingly the case that people are going out to work and working very hard but rents and house prices are so off the Richter scale that they are ending up homeless and there are no supports for them.

Following on from our earlier engagement on this issue, the Taoiseach is saying cost rental is coming and can address this issue. At the moment, however, it is not available and the delivery of it is pretty small compared with the huge numbers of working people finding themselves homeless or threatened with homelessness. I am asking whether in the interim, until we deliver the sort of massive scale of social and affordable housing that is necessary, the Government will take some measures for people who are working but are over the social housing income threshold, who cannot afford to live and who are ending up homeless or threatened with such. As the Taoiseach knows, approved housing bodies and the State are buying up new developments for social housing. One of the things the State could do is also buy up new developments for cost rental. This could ensure people who are over the thresholds but have incomes that are not enough to pay the rents being charged out there would get some rent support in order to have some chance of accessing rental accommodation. Some urgent measures need to be taken on this front.

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