Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South-Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

When the Minister's predecessor entered office, there was a debate about whether there was a housing crisis. Ultimately, he accepted that there was a housing crisis. In truth, we have had a housing crisis and a housing emergency for seven or eight years, maybe longer, but we have never had an emergency response. The Minister may protest about that, but, as a society, we have had emergency responses in respect of a number of policy areas in recent years - in many instances, these were warranted - but nothing similar has happened in terms of housing. The Government's approach has been to hope that business as usual will resolve the housing crisis. There has been no radical shift and no significant emergency response.

The only conclusion I can draw is that in its heart of hearts, the Government believes that the housing crisis is exaggerated or is not as severe as people in the House are saying it is. The facts speak for themselves. We have record numbers of people homeless.

What kind of situation is it that - I am not even sure I blame the media – the record is broken every month and it is hardly a major story? It has become so normalised to break the record for homelessness that it barely registers in the public’s imagination. That is the extent to which the Government and the previous Government have succeeded in normalising homelessness. In my opinion, there has never been the emergency response that is needed. It needs to begin now.

I will briefly make a point on affordable accommodation, so-called affordable schemes and some of the schemes we have seen come down the track. A scheme was outlined by Cork City Council in recent weeks. While I welcome any progress in terms of a roof over people’s heads, for the people who are frozen out of social housing and cannot get an adequate mortgage, there really is still no option for them. We are talking about minimum house prices of-----

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