Last Friday, I spent most of the day with a family staging a sit-in at South Dublin County Council. Emmanuel Chrisenoch and his family felt that they had no alternative. In their council house in Tallaght they have suffered eight years of repeated verbal and physical assaults with a clear racial element. For example, the N-word was graffitied on their wall. It culminated in a home invasion in January which saw their door being smashed in with a hammer and attackers being armed with a knife. They were very lucky to escape without serious injury. The council boarded their house up and since then they have been living in a church. The landlord of the church has since said that they have to leave so they have nowhere to go. The problem is that the council is saying that they should go back to their existing council home, which is boarded up, even though they feel, with very good reason, that their lives would be in danger if they did so. The question is whether the Government can intervene with the council and encourage it to see sense on this issue.

That is clearly a matter for the local authority which should deal with it in a sympathetic, human way. In situations like that in other local authorities, people are rehoused in a different location, particularly if the house is boarded up. We cannot intervene in every individual housing allocation. I do not know the full background, but I think the council should act appropriately in this regard and the family should be rehoused.