Homelessness: Statements Seanad Éireann — 2026-04-15 ============================================================ Alice-Mary Higgins (IND), National University of Ireland We have heard the stark figures everybody has been outlining. The sad thing is homelessness is related to, flows from and has been accepted for far too long as an unfortunate side consequence of Government policy, which has focused constantly on the property market and on housing and development, rather than on the issue of housing as homes and as shelter. The figures are stark. I will focus on the period from July 2014 when there were 3,258 people homeless. In March 2026 there were 17,308. That is a 431% increase. We need to cut through the narrative that we have been doing our best and we are picking up the pace. It has been getting worse over the period while the same parties were in government and constantly taking a similar approach. The official figures indicate a 431% increase in those in emergency accommodation and a 628% increase in children in emergency accommodation over the past ten years. Those figures do not include those in State emergency homeless accommodation, those in own-door temporary accommodation or those in domestic violence refuges. They do not include asylum seekers or those sleeping rough. They do not include the thousands of hidden homeless who are staying with friends and families in insecure situations. They do not include those with disabilities or older people who are in congregated settings that are unsuitable for them because those with disabilities should be accommodated under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UNCRPD, that we passed, being supported in independent housing. Those people do not feature. There is a line in the new strategy on disability and housing that I welcome. However, that does not feature in these stark figures. These are the missing pieces. Those shocking figures are in fact worse. Alongside that we have to look at the money-making and the fact that average rent since 2014 has doubled and house prices have increased by 91% in less than ten years. Wages have not doubled. No other aspect of life has doubled for people but rent and house prices have doubled. This is the tension because the Government has consistently focused on supporting the housing market and those whose goals, legitimate goals from a shareholder's perspective, are about making the most out of the property market. The Government has constantly gone to those same people and asked them what would they like. They want what makes them more profits: fewer sticks, less pressure, less regulation, lower standards and public subsidies for private profit-making. Time and again that has been given. The rules have been bent or abandoned, capital gains tax waivers here, suspension of normal planning process there and it has not delivered. I welcome the recognition of the need for direct delivery now. There is a fundamental issue in that the new strategy still has the language of old build programmes. It mentions that they cannot rely on Part V and turnkeys because they are negated by conditions. The former Minister, Paschal Donohoe was always praised for his supposed fiscal prudence, yet he missed a five-year window during which the EU fiscal rules were suspended, when the State could and should have invested in housing and when the Opposition was crying out for it. In that five-year period, zero percent loans were available. We heard repeatedly that we need private investment and private investment will have to be encouraged. Private investment is encouraged by making sure it is not paying taxes back to the State at the same level and by making sure developers get their money back for connections. This is all public subsidising to bridge what has been called the viability gap. In fact, the State could have been building. It had a surplus and a suspension of the fiscal rules, it had access to zero percent financing and wasted that five-year period. It has again become a discussion about the viability gap and how to get private finance moving. That needs to be acknowledged when we move forward. There is still a huge focus on mobilising private investment and not on public investment. That public investment is now in a more difficult circumstance than it would have been if we had taken the opportunity when it was there. Another opportunity was there in 2017, when our group brought forward legislation on vacant properties. That is almost a decade ago. We were told it was constitutionally difficult to do anything in that area. However, we still see a bad plan. Regarding vacant properties, it is still the plan that local authorities are meant to track them down. One of the big gaps is that this money does not go back into local authorities. If that money were allowed to become part of the fund that local authorities could then use to develop for housing, that would have made a difference in terms of the appallingly poor application of derelict housing and vacant property taxes. I will finish by talking about the quality of emergency accommodation. The Department does not give us the figures for how long, but we know 3,000 single households have been in it for more than one year while 1,400 have been in emergency accommodation for more than two years. Many families are raising children in emergency accommodation that is not appropriate or developmentally safe for children. The Barnados report has been clear on this. In his response, will the Minister of State talk about how he will address this in the delivery of housing and how he will address those forgotten groups, including asylum seekers, migrants, those with disabilities and other groups? Will he talk about how he plans to address the issue of emergency accommodation, its quality and people's rights within it? Will he elaborate on the focus on new-build programmes and the move away from Part V and turnkey pieces? Whenever there is a recession, that is when we see those projects and those public-private partnerships fold and social housing so often takes the hit. How will we ensure that we are doing direct build? Is a State construction company still on the table? --- 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