Kathleen Funchion (Carlow-Kilkenny, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I remind everybody that we have a surplus of money in this country. We are not in any way a poor country. However, yesterday, the Children's Rights Alliance released figures in its annual child poverty monitor, which clearly show that for many families rent affordability is still the single biggest driver of child homelessness. The number of children living in emergency accommodation increased from 2,811 in March 2022 to 3,472 in March 2023. As of March 2024, 4,147 children call bed and breakfast accommodation or a hotel room home. We are robbing the childhoods of these children. In fact, the Government is robbing their childhoods. We cannot continually talk about the housing crisis. At this point, it has gone beyond crisis. The Government is well aware of the situation but continues to do nothing about it.

The Government is driving record numbers of children into homelessness. There is no doubt children are being seriously failed by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. I remind people of the child poverty unit that the former Taoiseach, Deputy Leo Varadkar, set up to try to tackle child poverty. I am not sure what happened to that unit or whether it is still even in existence with the new Taoiseach in place, but certainly absolutely nothing was done to tackle the situation of child poverty. We know that one of the key factors in this is the cost of rent.

One year on, family homelessness has risen to levels that were just unthinkable a decade ago. Last year, Ireland was examined by the Committee on the Rights of the Child. In its concluding observations, that committee urged Ireland to address "the root causes of homelessness among children". The committee called for the phasing out of emergency accommodation and an increase in the supply of long-term social housing. What has happened in the intervening year is the reverse. Child poverty levels have risen with 31,682 children now living in poverty, according to last year's reports, and child homelessness has increased by 500%. How can anybody stand over those figures? Every day that we see this Government continue in office, the worse things are getting for children. I honestly do not know how anybody can sit on the Government benches and not acknowledge how unbelievable it is.

I will give a few examples of what the housing crisis actually means for people. It means people cannot access a housing assistance payment, HAP, property. They are constantly searching but cannot find a place to rent within their HAP means. It means people, mainly women, coming out of domestic violence situations. I have lost track of the number of those cases I have dealt with in the past year. Women are coming into my office saying they should not have even left their relationship because they are in the domestic violence shelter for much longer than they should be. They are then going into emergency accommodation and thinking, "What have I done? Here I am with my children." Can you imagine that we have a situation where women are thinking they would nearly be better off going back to those relationships because the housing situation is so bad? That is all at the hands of this Government.

Across the whole area of the south east, including counties Waterford, Wexford and Wicklow, and counties Cork, Tipperary, Clare, Limerick and Kerry, homeownership has totally collapsed. As my colleague, Deputy Kerrane, said, young people have totally lost hope of owning a home. They are emigrating not because they cannot find work, which we saw in the past in this country, but because they have no hope of ever owning a home. It is very clear that the Government does not have the skills, ability or will to fix the housing crisis. Political will, political priorities and political choices are at the heart of all this. The very first speech I gave in the Dáil in 2016 related to the housing crisis. Eight years later, we are all still talking about the same situation. That is down to the political will not being there to solve this situation.

If or when Sinn Féin is in government, it will deliver the biggest public housing programme in the history of the State. We will deliver affordable homes for families and drive down child homelessness. Sinn Féin will support homeowners and speed up the construction of homes so families can begin their lives in the comfort of a home they can call their own. I stress that at the heart of all this are children who are being totally and utterly failed at the hands of this Government. These are children who cannot have playdates, birthday parties or all the things so many of us take for granted for our children because they have to call emergency accommodation, bed and breakfast accommodation or a hotel room home. That is the children we know of in those situations. Many more are trying to live where three, four and five families are in one house.

I urge everyone to support the motion. I reiterate the call by Deputy Buckley for the Government to withdraw its countermotion.

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