Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-29
============================================================

Richard Boyd Barrett (PBP), Dún Laoghaire

I am amazed that the Tánaiste is trumpeting success in light of the housing disaster that people face in this country. Tomorrow, we will have the end-of-month figures for homelessness. At the end of December, 16,996 people were homeless. A record number of people, including 5,321 children, were living in the misery of emergency accommodation.
Whatever the figures are tomorrow, there will be an unacceptable level of homelessness.
Next week, the Government plans to bring in a Bill that is going to lead to some of the most, if not the most, unaffordable rents anywhere in Europe being increased even further because market rents will then dictate what any tenancy that ends can be set at. Market rents are currently €2,600 a month and in much of Dublin they are more often €3,000 or even €3,500. These are shocking levels. We now have the CSO figures that show 36,000, which, honestly, is a marginal improvement.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-29/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:34+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-29