Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour)

I return to the Government’s failure to provide for children. The thought of one child in homelessness is awful, but last month the number of children in homelessness in Ireland surpassed 5,000 for the first time - another shameful record. We see now more than 16,000 people altogether without a home. On the media this week, the Taoiseach sought to deflect blame from central government to local authorities, calling out councils for dragging their feet, for inertia and lack of proactivity on ensuring increased housing supply. However, there is so much that central government could do and we in Labour are calling on it to do two things that would address the scourge of child homelessness: pass Labour's homeless families Bill to ensure local councils must prioritise protection of children from homelessness, and second, reverse the Minister for housing's cuts to the tenant in situ scheme. What we are hearing from local authorities is they need more resources to enable them to activate a scheme that was supposed to keep families out of homelessness, namely, the tenant in situ scheme, which has in fact been almost entirely ineffective because it has been starved of resources.

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