Homelessness: Statements (Resumed)
Seanad Éireann — 2026-04-22
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Sarah O'Reilly (AON), Agricultural Panel

I thank the Minister for coming back in. I was just about to speak when he was called to a vote last week. Homelessness has been a crisis for the past decade, all the way back to the early 2000s. Hundreds and hundreds of articles with crisis in the headline can be found. It is not a crisis anymore; it is normality. There were 17,308 people recorded in emergency accommodation as of February 2026. That is a 13% increase in just one year. Month after month, year after year, the numbers keep climbing. This does not account for hidden homelessness, such as the young person who is couch surfing and the two or three generations of families doubling up in overcrowded homes or the couple in a mobile home behind a hedge. It is estimated that as many as 290,000 people in Ireland could be living like this, unseen and uncounted.
Something that needs to be addressed is that the number of homeless deaths is only recorded in Dublin. How can we address a crisis when we do not even understand the full picture? We need to know the mortality rate for those outside of Dublin. Our councillor in Limerick, Sarah Beasley, has raised this time and again. If the Government is not even willing to count the homelessness, what does that say about how their lives are valued? Homeless does not mean worthless. I would like a response from the Minister on why the Department is not recording the number of homeless deaths outside of Dublin city.
The housing crisis is stunting the lives of people across the country. There are couples who are desperate to move out of their parents' homes and start a family but they cannot find anywhere to live. Affordability is a massive issue but many people who want to build have been denied planning permission for the most nonsensical reasons. I am working with a couple in Kildare who are trying to build on land beside their parents' home and have been denied planning permission because of population targets set by the local authority. That policy was set by the Minister's Department. To me, that is absolutely outrageous and the Government needs to remove all red tape for people who are desperately trying to house themselves.
It is a shocking contrast to the Minister's plans to build seven super-sized IPAS centres, which will supersede regular planning regulations. The Government had previously said this planning circumvention was an emergency measure to cope with the war in Ukraine and it would be removed, but now the Government is moving full steam ahead to copper-fasten it within legislation. The Government will apply one rule for us regular folk and another rule for itself. I have a question for the Minister on modular housing. What state are we at with legislation for modular units in back gardens? If the Minister wants, he could fast-track this legislation and provide some relief to people who find themselves without anywhere to go.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-04-22/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:50+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-22