Fine Gael has now been in power for 12 years. For seven of those years, it has been joined at the hip to Fianna Fáil. On its watch we have gone from housing crisis to housing emergency to housing disaster. The policies Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have implemented together over the course of the last decade have brought us to where we are today. They have followed an agenda that explicitly transferred to the private market the responsibilities of Government to deliver housing for our people. To understand the emergenc…

Tá ag teipeadh glan ar an Rialtas seo maidir le tithíocht. Ba cheart dó imeacht. In ainm Dé, tá ár bpobal i mbarr a gcéille agus iad ar son tithe atá slán agus ar fáil ar phraghas réasúnta. Tá daoine i mbarr a gcéille agus iad ar son na hathraithe. Is Rialtas Shinn Féin amháin a réiteoidh an ghéarchéim tithíochta. Ireland is a great country. Our people are brimming with talent and energy. They deserve better than the stranglehold of this perpetual housing crisis. They deserve better than Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil b…

Now is the time for others to be given the chance to show what we can do. It is time for change. The longer Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael remain in Government, the more damage they will do. We need a general election and the sooner, the better.

No, you are not.

The Sinn Féin Bill before the Dáil is one last chance to stop thousands from losing their homes. Our legislation to extend the eviction ban buys the Government the time needed to use emergency powers to create necessary capacity and safety nets for vulnerable renters. The Bill, based on the Government's own legislation passed last October, will protect those facing eviction and homelessness in the coming weeks. If passed, it would be legally binding on the Oireachtas and would force Government to act. This Bill pro…

I know for sure that lifting the eviction ban means the prospect of homelessness for thousands of people, and the Taoiseach knows that too. I know too their fears, their worry, their anxiety, and I know that amplifying that fact, amplifying that experience, is not in the least bit exploitative. As a matter of fact, those who face the prospect of homelessness in a matter of days expect us to come to the Dáil, expect us to amplify and to express that experience, expect us to fight the Taoiseach tooth and nail and not…

That is simply not true. Have we not spent the last weeks and months, and has the Taoiseach not spent them, lamenting the fact that we are losing landlords, that we are losing capacity in the private rental sector? I ask the Taoiseach to answer this question again, and this time to try to answer it straight: where will people go? My appeal has fallen on deaf ears, it seems. We will have a vote this evening. I hope the rest of us on these benches have heard those amplified stories of hardship and fear, and we will d…

Could the Taoiseach stop forcing people into homelessness? That is more in his line.

The independent review into violence and harassment in the Defence Forces published shocking findings yesterday, for example, that women were barely tolerated and many were subjected to harassment, bullying and assault, including rape. Decades on from some of these incidents, the devastating effects for women are still felt. We all agree that brave women who join our Defence Forces to serve our country proudly deserve to do their job safely and with dignity and their rights must be upheld and protected. I commend t…

We have had a housing crisis for more than a decade and this Government has been in office for three years yet only now a report comes to Cabinet stating what everybody already knew, which is that thousands of homes could be built on public land. For years, we have said that building public homes on public land is the answer to the housing crisis. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil turned a deaf ear every time. They did not want to know. The shocking thing about the report arriving at Cabinet today is that it does not prese…

They are not new.

That is inaccurate.

Our Bill buys the Government time to do what it needs to do. I said in my initial commentary the demonstrable unanswerable evidence of the Government's absolute failure to provide housing and failure to protect renters is everywhere to be seen and felt. At no time did I say that 4,000 people would find themselves in emergency accommodation, much less 4,000 households, for the simple reason that there is not enough emergency accommodation to facilitate them. I went to some length to spell out to the Taoiseach what h…

Saying that was an insult to people who the Government will cast into homeless, be they caught in the official figures or not.

It would not be difficult to be more compassionate than the Taoiseach.

It is a low bar.

No. It will be 4,000 homeless families.

It is 4,000 homeless families.

The Government is a disgrace.

It has no teeth.