Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

On this first day back, I will raise the issues of housing and health, as I have on each occasion we have come back. I raise the issue of housing because the housing crisis continues to worsen. The figures and the record of the Government are particularly stark. When it took office, there was 231 homeless adults and 62 homeless children in Limerick, including 41 families. Four years later, the Government has now doubled the number of homeless adults in Limerick to 442. It has tripled the number of homeless children to 191 and almost tripled the number of homeless families to 110. Those are the cold facts. We see it every day in our clinics as the housing crisis gets worse and worse and children are left to fester in hotels and hostels.These are the results of deliberate decisions by this Government, specifically the disastrous decision to lift the ban on evictions. However, it gets worse because over the course of this Government, the cost of renting in Limerick has gone up by over €10,000. That is the reality and again, that was a political choice. The Government could have frozen rents; it chose not to. Now people are being put to the pins of their collars trying to save each month just to make those rents so they can make extortionate profits, particularly for corporate vulture landlords who pay no tax whatsoever in this country. It is a record of absolute failure, and I am asking for an urgent debate on that issue.

The second issue - the Leader will not be surprised that I raise it again - is the horrendous circumstance of University Hospital Limerick, UHL, which has been all over the news for last number of days. Again, the record is stark. The record number of people on trolleys last year, which was 21,409, is going to be exceeded this year. We already have more than 17,000 human beings on trolleys. That does not include weekends. We have a Minister who actually denies those figures and who has been in this Chamber to deny those figures. He is in denial about the extent of the crisis in UHL. I am glad to say there will be a debate in the Dáil on this issue later this evening. The reality is that UHL remains in crisis, and we are heading into another winter without a sufficient plan. In each of the last two winters the system effectively collapsed, and we are looking at that again. We only learned on Sunday that the new 96-bed unit, which has been promised for quarter 1 throughout the lifetime of this Government, will are not open in quarter 1 or quarter 2. It will not open until after quarter 2 according to Mr. Bernard Gloster. It will be another winter of discontent. We are 200 bed shorts in UHL. The Government has had four years to address this crisis. It has simply failed to do so, and I am calling for an urgent debate.