Maire Devine (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister. Here we are again, making statements, but I am really not fond of statements as we should be here for legislation. Since the last statements in the Seanad on this issue, the homelessness figures have continued to rise, especially among children. I am disappointed we are back to listen to the Minister accept how dreadful these figures are, to promise to do more and to undertake to come back to the Seanad at a later stage to update us on progress. Given the urgency of the crisis, I would have expected to be here to discuss much-needed legislation to set in motion the change in policy and direction promised by his Government. The Government is doing nothing different from three months ago and there is no major change in attitude or application. The most worrying aspect of it is that the Government still does not fully grasp the extent of the national disgrace that is childhood homelessness.

I am reluctant to use up too much time in laying bare the extent of the problem but I feel I must. In almost every single indicator, the housing crisis is getting worse, with 8,000 people sleeping in emergency accommodation, 3,000 of whom are children, many of whom are born into homelessness not knowing anything else, such as the security and comfort of their own hearth and kin gathered around. Many of these families with children will spend more than two years in inappropriate emergency accommodation and I have reminded the Minister repeatedly that those figures do not include adults and children in domestic refuges funded by the Department of Children and Youth Affairs, those in step-down accommodation, the families who are couchsurfing or living in sheds or those trapped in direct provision.

There were 90,000 households on the council waiting lists as of last September and I am sure those figures are rising. In many local authority areas the length of time families are waiting for local authority allocations can be 15 or 18 years. Thousands of people are stuck in an affordability trap with rising rents, rising house prices and land values. At this moment, next door to us in the National Library my party colleague, Deputy Eoin Ó Broin, is hosting a conference advocating the immediate building of social housing. It is ironic that an Opposition party has had to gather together the relevant stakeholders and experts to discuss the best way of advancing one of the most fundamental duties of this State, which is to ensure its citizens are housed safely and securely. More is happening outside Government circles than within them in the area of housing advocacy. The campaign entitled, "My Name Is" which was organised by the inner city action on homelessness group was a brilliant visual manifestation of what the Government's failure leads to, which is young children who have no home to go to after they leave school.

Also on the subject of taking up the slack, I wish to mention the wonderful initiative of Sinn Féin councillor, Shane O'Brien, in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown Council where agreement has been reached to work together on the development of the innovative proposal for the Shanganagh urban village co-operative on housing development, consisting of 200 social housing apartments and 340 affordable homes.