Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State. What strikes me is that we all have a common goal but what frightens me is how long we attach ourselves to how we do that. We talk about working together and then we listen to Senator Higgins talking about those tension points and how things work when so many people have different ideas. Up until this point, we have not got it right. When do we admit that we have not got it right and have to change direction? That is what scares me.

What struck me about what Senator Higgins said was that we are just doing more of the same, or tinkering around that idea. At some point we have to be able to measure when it is working and when it is not working and be willing to deviate from how we are doing things. Sometimes I worry that as politicians, policymakers and civil servants we marry ourselves so tightly to an idea that we often do not want to believe it will fail. We must at some point be willing to step into failure, notice it, acknowledge it, take responsibility for it, agree to change direction and be willing to let go of something we have clung on to so tightly as a way forward. That is what I ask going forward.

So many people have confidence in or hopes for the Housing for All policy. How long do we measure something to ensure it is working? Is the commitment always there to acknowledge that if those aspirations that are laid before us today by everyone are not working we then say, "Okay we need to step away from this now and maybe we need to look other ways to do housing"? That has clearly been spoken about in the Chamber today.

We are looking forward, but what about when we look back? Beyond just ensuring that this generation and the ones to come do not experience what has gone on in the past, how do we rectify what has happened? That is a conversation that needs to be had. I am sure there are thousands of human rights cases at this stage that could be taken to the European Court of Human Rights in regard to how people are living. How do we make recompense for that?I recall when I first came into this Chamber, I was trying to support a girl from Tallaght who was housed in a hotel room in Sandymount, I think, and she did not drive. She felt she was a failure because she was still feeding bottled milk to her child who should have moved on to solid food because she did not have the capacity within the hotel room or the capacity to travel back to her family who lived in Tallaght. She needed to take a bus to town and another from town to Tallaght, which takes a lot of time. Therefore, she had to choose to leave her child on SMA milk or some sort of powdered milk when the child should have been progressing onto solid food. That is just one tiny issue. Can the House imagine all the stories and situations where people's health has been impacted for years to come, their mental health, their family situations, family breakdowns or addition that has been a result of homelessness? When we think of policy for the future to ensure it never happens again, how do we begin to actually address that? That has to be a massive part of the conversation when we talk about working together and looking to the future. A right to housing is good but, again, it is about action for the future and responsibility for what has happened.

I recall working with Safetynet during the lockdown. We were not sitting at the time, so I went and volunteered with Safetynet for a while. I had to visit a halting site to offer hepatitis vaccinations because Travellers were being exposed to hepatitis B in the water because of the conditions. I think, "God, that was 2021 in Ireland," when that was happening. Those are the substandard conditions that we are talking about that are a complete violation of people's human rights. As we look forward about how we do things, we probably need to have a conversation about how that recompense and support happens for people whose lives no housing policy in the future will be able to correct because the damage is so deep and prevalent. I ask Members to keep that in mind as well as we look forward to that idea of working together in how we can do housing differently.