Address to Seanad Éireann by Members of the European Parliament Seanad Éireann — 2026-09-23 ============================================================ Aubrey McCarthy (IND), University of Dublin I thank the three MEPs for being here today. It has probably been covered but I have worked in homelessness for the past number of years. I worked with Mr. Ríordáin and Ms Regina Doherty on that. I have never seen numbers like what we see at the moment. There are 17,527 people in emergency accommodation and I spoke today about 5,659 children. That number does not cover people sleeping in their cars, on couches, etc. I set up an organisation 20 years ago called Tiglin. We work with people that are marginalised and we are seeing the face of homelessness absolutely change. I spoke recently in the House about a young man who came into the Lighthouse Café on Pearse Street for dinner and we got talking. He has a job. He was given notice by his landlord that he was going to be evicted so he had to leave and he is in a tent in the Sandymount region. He is not the typical cohort of homeless people that we would have been used to. I hope Europe is finally acting. I know it has published its first ever affordable housing plan and proposed a Council recommendation on fighting housing exclusion. In November, Dublin will host the EU Ministers with responsibility for homelessness. I have two questions. First, the Commission's proposal asks every member to report back every five years. Is that frequent enough to hold people to account or does the target need to be stronger? Second, what have the MEPs seen work in other member states that we could not only study but copy and make work here? Europe is committed to ending homelessness by 2030 and Ireland has adopted that commitment as well. However, I was in this House ten years ago when we were going to do away with homelessness by 2020, so I have seen these targets move. I was in Ukraine two weeks ago and visited Kyiv and saw what was happening on the ground. The EU's €90 billion loan was discussed. That covers Ukraine's needs for this year and next but they were asking for it to be front-loaded so that some of 2027's loan could be taken in 2026. What is the plan going forward and how can Ireland as a neutral country best contribute? --- 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/2026-09-23/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:49+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-09-23