Homelessness: Statements
Seanad Éireann — 2026-04-15
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Chris Andrews (SF), Labour Panel

I thank the Minister of State. It is really important to have statements on homelessness and the new housing policy, Delivering Homes, Building Communities. The people I meet and the people who call my office every single day, some of them crying, upset and requiring additional support services, do not see any delivery of homes. We just have to look at the family hubs. In the north inner city you can see the huge number of hotels and the family hubs. They are all behind the statistics the Minister of State came out with. There is no sense that homes are being delivered. When we look at 17,000 people homeless, the evidence suggests the Government has given up trying to solve the housing crisis and the homelessness crisis because its members talk about levers, commitments and plans, but the reality is the people sleeping in doorways around the city and down along the quays do not see any delivery of homes.
The Government talks about affordable homes. A total of 550 homes were due to be delivered on the Irish Glass Bottle site in Ringsend. It claims those 550 homes are all going to be affordable - that is debatable - but there will be affordable rental. Families, almost certainly from the area - ordinary working families with average pay - will not be able to afford to live in those so-called affordable homes on the Irish Glass Bottle site.
The other part of that housing policy is building communities. The only community it seems to be building is a homeless community. There are 5,000 children in homeless accommodation as a result of the failures of this Government; 5,000 children who have no home to go to and have no prospect of a home under this Government. We have a situation where the Minister for housing has not met the Irish Glass Bottle Housing Action Group. The group has gone through four housing Ministers and this Minister will not meet them. He has refused to meet the residents in Pearse House, even though he pulled the regeneration programme there.
Homelessness is solvable - it absolutely is solvable - but it is not solvable if there is no commitment to invest in public housing and to developing social housing. The Irish Glass Bottle site was a perfect example of a site where the Government could have put public housing. The Government sold off Camden Yard when it was under the Department of education's brief. The buyers went bankrupt and now it seems there is public housing going to go on that site. Why did the Government not just put public housing on it in the first place? The Government does not have a commitment. It does not have a handle on addressing the homeless crisis.

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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