Marc MacSharry (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

What I say is not in any way to gazump Senator Craughwell and his e-mail to us all following the shock and horror of events in recent days and the need to debate homelessness and take tangible action, but we must table an amendment to the Order of Business that the Minister would come to the House today. The crisis is such that it demands immediacy rather than to be scheduled as a matter for debate tomorrow evening. A man lost his life a matter of yards from where we speak today and it is unacceptable that we will again have a day's outrage and resort to business as usual. If there is genuine political will to do something about this crisis then we must press ahead and do it. That means now - today. It also means decisions backed up by resources to deal with the problem.

Since 2011, we have had two cuts to the rent allowance scheme and warnings were given at the time as to the impact the cuts would have. As we speak, 168 people are sleeping rough in Dublin. It is not just a Dublin problem; people are sleeping rough in every urban centre throughout the country. There are 90,000 people on the housing waiting list, 20,000 in Dublin alone, 9,000 in Kildare and more than 1,000 in my town of Sligo.

We have seen this crisis throughout the country. Last week, some €2.2 billion was announced for a housing strategy that is supposed to solve all the problems over the next six years. As we saw with the terrible loss of Jonathan Corrie's life this week, this matter requires immediate action. One wonders where the social dividend is from the 2,000 units that were to be available from NAMA since 2012. How many boarded-up units do we have in local authorities throughout the country, where councils do not have the money to do up such facilities to accommodate people immediately? How many Army barracks, fire stations and Garda stations have we closed down around the country? Surely there is no shortage of property. What we need is the political will, rather than - as with the suicide crisis - aimlessly saying "Shock, horror" from time to time when there is a tragedy. We all manufacture a bit of anger in here but do nothing about it. For that reason we must push this to a vote today.

The Minister must come here today and we must be prepared to take the appropriate action. Talk is cheap, as we have seen. No Government has covered itself in glory in dealing with this issue but it has now clearly come to this. Somebody has died across the street and we are sitting here saying that we will talk about it tomorrow and have it sorted by 2020. We have empty buildings all over the country and while there is clearly money to do certain things, there is no one to accommodate homeless people.

As I lay in bed this morning, I was embarrassed listening to the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy Simon Coveney, who promised people that there was a plan to get homeless people off the streets when it gets cold at Christmas. Let us get them off the street today, not when it gets cold at Christmas. It is cold already and it is not acceptable to deal with this situation in two years' time. Perhaps the Minister, Deputy Coveney, was outside his comfort zone of agriculture this morning. He was a disgrace telling the nation that he has a plan if it gets cold at Christmas. How dare he? How dare we all settle for such mediocrity?

When time allows, but certainly sooner rather than later, can the Minister, Deputy Coveney, attend this House to explain his Department's inactivity in seeking to open the Russian market to beef and live cattle? Why are his people not taking a proactive approach? Why can the Minister or one of his departmental officials not go on tour to get these markets opened? Denmark, the Netherlands, Italy and France have agreed bilateral agreements for the opening of the Russian market by the end of December, while we sit on our hands blatantly ignoring the silent crisis of our agricultural SME sector which needs us to be proactive. We cannot operate on some kind of administrative auto-pilot, indifferent to the difficulties facing farming families.

The four countries I named have opened the Russian market, yet we are sitting here waiting for some lead on a European-wide basis. A focused, proactive approach is required by the Minister in order to achieve what is required for marketing Irish beef.