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

Children should not be in emergency accommodation. I pressed for the tenant in situscheme for years and the Government is doing it and it has made a difference. I have also pressed for the Government to buy social and affordable housing straight from the developers, which the Government is starting to do, and I welcome that. I am telling the Minister of State there are not enough three and four-bedroom properties. No child should be homeless but there should be a time limit for how long a child spends in emergency accommodation. It is wrong that there are children I know who have been in emergency accommodation for four years. That is utterly unacceptable. There needs to be a particular focus on ensuring that children do not end up in emergency accommodation, and if they do, that they get out. There are plans for more social housing and so on but many of them are too far down the list. We need to start buying three and four-bedroom properties.

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