Catherine Ardagh (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Today I would like to raise two matters, the first of which is hidden homeless. There is a cohort of people who are relying on the charity of their siblings, parents and grandparents to live and to bring up their families. A lady came to me who, along with her four children, was living with her sister. She was sleeping on the sofa in the living room with her four children. There were ten in the house. For the purposes of the CSO figures, she is not categorised as homeless. Once a person removes himself or herself from emergency accommodation, he or she is taken out of that category. The Government needs to look at how we classify homeless people and consider how to reclassify them. Obviously, this woman is living with her sister and is not in secure accommodation and is for all intents and purposes homeless. I ask the Minister to come to the House to address how we calculate the real figure of homelessness. We know there are 8,000 people in emergency accommodation, including 3,000 children, but in fact that figure is on the low side. I believe there are many more people who are homeless and I would categorise them as hidden homeless.

Second, I wish to raise the issue of gender pension inequality. Yesterday, after the budget, the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, when commenting on the gender pension inequality admitted it was "bonkers and unbelievable" that women were losing out on pension payment under the current regime. He went on to say that the way they are treated is wrong. It is pretty disingenuous that he made these comments yesterday but made no reference in his Budget Statement on Tuesday as to how he would rectify and amend the changes made in 2012. Thousands of women have lost out every year on the level of the pension payment to which they were entitled. Lipservice without action is not reasonable. I think the Minister should come to the House and explain in detail what he will do. Pension reform has been discussed. When the Taoiseach served as Minister for Social Protection there was talk about pension reform, but all we saw was lipservice to the idea of pension reform.However, we did not see any pension reform, all we saw was lipservice to the idea of it. We can do something now for these women. We could reverse the 2012 changes immediately. It would require a small piece of legislation. I ask for the Minister to come to the House to address why he cannot make that change immediately.