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

It is all very well setting up a committee to deal with child poverty and welfare but it has to do something. The Taoiseach said he wants to give children the best start in life - absolutely. One of things that guarantees they do not have a good start in life is if they are homeless or they are facing the prospect of being homeless. A total of 4,170 children are in emergency accommodation, and the situation is getting worse every month. The Taoiseach needs to address that and to recognise that his Government has so far failed to do so. It has worsened every month.

I want to just point him to a few things that could help. First, we do not have enough three- or four-bedroom houses being bought or built by local authorities. In the new Part V private development that is coming up in Shanganagh as opposed to the Land Development Agency development, all of the units that are being bought are only one- or two-bedroom apartments, even though there are loads of three- and four-bedroom apartments. When we are talking about kids, they generally have three- our four-bed needs.

Housing needs assessment does not take into account families that are on RAS and HAP transfer lists but many of them are families with children. When people are facing the possibility of eviction, they cannot get the higher rate of homeless HAP until eight weeks before they are facing eviction. Even though many people know months in advance they are facing the prospect of being homeless, local housing authorities will not do anything for them until they are eight weeks out. Even then, they will basically say to them to wait until they are homeless and then knock on their door, by which time the kids are thrown into homelessness. That has to stop. There has to be a proactive and preventative approach to kids or anybody, but especially kids and families, going into homelessness. At the moment, that is not what is happening. It is a bureaucratic approach and it is not prioritising children and families.

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