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

The Minister of State has quoted a lot of policies, figures and so on, but the important figure here is the number of people in homelessness, as well as the consistent rise, which has been pretty dramatic over the past months, in family homelessness. It is rising. The Government's policies are not working and, therefore, a number of children are going to go through the trauma of spending Christmas in emergency accommodation, in many cases for the second, third and sometimes fourth year in a row. There is all the mental health trauma that involves for children.

There are many aspects to this. First, we are not working with the families who are in this situation to get them out and we are not thinking outside the box. Second, where blocks and so on are being purchased by AHBs and local authorities, which I welcome and which I have pressed for, much of them are one and two-bedroom properties because that is what the developers are building. They are not building three and four-bedroom properties. We need three and four-bedroom properties to help families exit homelessness. That is the reason that family homelessness is rising. The Government needs to pay attention to that and do something about it.

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