Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We have the highest rents ever. The average rent in Dublin now is €2,400 per month. We have the biggest housing list ever, with 134,000 in need of social housing. We have the greatest number of homeless ever, just short of 14,000 at the end of March this year. There were only 8,700 when the Government, including the Minister, entered office. There has been a 60% increase in four years. We have the highest number of children living in homeless shelters or family hubs. Billions of euro are diverted annually from building public houses to subsidise landlordism and vulture funds in this State. These figures are not figures to be proud of but the Government seems to believe they are. We should remember that behind all these figures, these statistics, there are families and individuals. There are young men and women and elderly couples with no place to call home. People are couch-surfing or cramped in boxrooms or attics in their parents’ or relatives’ homes. The statistics include the mother sharing her bed with her 12-year-old son in a room already divided to allow her 20-year-old brother some space to sleep in. There are people nearing retirement who are facing homelessness in the knowledge that their pension will not cover the rent. Tenants are putting up with squalid, damp-infested conditions because they know that if they pipe up, they will have nowhere else and face homelessness. These are not figures that the Minister should be proud of. It is time to go. It is time for us to take over and declare the emergency for what it is.

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