Homelessness: Statements Seanad Éireann — 2026-04-15 ============================================================ Maria McCormack (SF), Labour Panel Homelessness has become normalised in Ireland. That is the sad fact we are dealing with. I want to bring the House back to 2014, when it was already widely acknowledged that we were in the midst of a housing crisis. The tragic death of Jonathan Corrie just outside Leinster House shocked people and caused outrage. Mr. Corrie's death was described as a national disgrace. More beds were promised, a night café was established to give homeless people somewhere safe to go and there was talk of how the Government's 2013 promise to end long-term homelessness by 2016 might be achieved. In case someone is looking at this debate on "Reeling in the Years", we are now in 2026 and this has not happened. As I am in this Chamber here, I received a message from my local bin company telling me my bin charges will go up from May 2026. I got a message yesterday from my local bus operator that brings my child to school telling me the bus fee will go up by another €5. We wonder how we have this. Many more homeless people since Jonathan Corrie have died on our streets. There has been less outrage, less surprise and, even worse, even less effective action by successive Governments. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have been in government for ten years, first through a confidence-and-supply arrangement in 2016 and then in two formal coalition Governments. During that decade, 55,000 adults have been forced into homelessness. These are the real figures. The 2016 census showed that just under 7,000 people were homeless in Ireland. Ten years on, here we are with record numbers, rising month on month. We are now at 17,300 recorded as homeless. Nobody is shocked any more. We are having statements on it in the Seanad. Sadly, homelessness is normalised. There continues to be chronic underinvestment and underdelivery in social and genuinely affordable homes. Each housing plan the Government comes up with contains low social and affordable housing targets, targets that are, even at that, consistently missed each year. This is the legacy. It is difficult to listen to how the Government is doing everything it can to fix this. The facts are there. It is not happening. I will talk about prevention measures because I want to try to let people out there feel there could be solutions. People often ask, "What would Sinn Féin do if they were in government?" I want to talk about where you could put investment right now, and that is in homelessness prevention. Prevention measures would reduce long-term reliance on emergency accommodation and break the cycle of homelessness before it begins. Instead, we see frustrating statistics such as that in 2024 local authorities spent 18 times more on emergency accommodation than on homelessness prevention and supports. This reactive approach is both expensive and ineffective in addressing the root cause of homelessness. The Minister needs to start addressing the key drivers of homelessness - the biggest one at present is the private rental market - but instead he brought forward the rent hike legislation last month. I am not exaggerating when I say that I have seen a significant increase in the number of families and individuals from Laois who are now facing homelessness in six months' time, because in recent weeks they have received an eviction notice. This is not a coincidence. I was told in this House that this would not happen. In Laois there are 1,512 people on the housing list. A total of 34% of those households are relying on private rental accommodation through HAP. That is 511 tenancies in Laois. I could stand here and speak all day about the failures in homelessness, but I am asking this Government to please put its head down and look properly at what it can do because we cannot normalise homelessness anymore. --- 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/seanad/2026-04-15/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:48+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-04-15