The number of renters being obliged to leave their homes is staggering. Last year, 3,038 households renting were served a notice to quit, mainly because the landlord was selling. This is the highest number of tenant evictions to take place in a single year since the foundation of the State. The number of families facing eviction has continued unabated into this year.

Renters are living in fear and insecurity. They are terrified of losing their home and facing the impossible task of finding somewhere else to rent. A quarter of all children are growing up in an insecure private rental sector. That is 281,000 children. For a child, stability and security are fundamental to enable them to develop and grow.

I have two examples of families who came to my constituency office last week. There was a young couple with one young child who got the go-ahead to self-accommodate. The woman was on the phone ringing the hotels around Dublin city. Councillor Pat Dunne was on the phone to the family support unit. She eventually got a room that was available and the family support officer agreed. However, the hotel priced the room at €460 a night, without even breakfast. The officer refused to pay that amount of money and said it was above the amount they could afford.

Another woman with two teenagers will be homeless this week. Councillor Pat Dunne contacted the family support unit, which replied that the person had notified the unit last month. They were eligible for homeless HAP and the family support unit continued to say that she stated the need for two bedrooms. It advised that in emergency accommodation only one bedroom would be provided, if even one was available on the day, as its service was currently at capacity. There was no availability in the hubs. It had three other families on top of these cases, who were resorting to sofa surfing and outstaying their welcome. Families are splitting up children among friends or family. The numbers presenting are greater than the numbers leaving the system at the moment.

Given the prices and unavailability in hotels, bed and breakfasts and hubs, my fear is we will have families back sleeping in cars or going to Garda stations. We advise people who come into us before they actually leave to overhold if they have nowhere to go, and that is stressful in itself for families. On the radio, one man said he was advised to go to a Garda station.

The housing crisis is scarring a generation of children. Hundreds of thousands of children are growing up in this country not knowing what is like to live in a stable, secure and safe home. In May of last year, official figures showed 928 families and their 2,148 children were homeless. In March of this year, that number rose to 2,811 children, which is a 37% increase in homeless children.

It beyond time for a real housing emergency response from the Government. One major response is the reinstatement of the eviction ban for two years and, at a minimum, to introduce a rent freeze. How does the Government propose to support these families and resolve the crisis, not in the future, but now?

I thank the Deputy for raising the issue. She highlighted a number of individual cases that underline a real crisis for those individuals and families. If she wants to provide the details of those individual cases to the Minister, Deputy Darragh O’Brien, I have no doubt that he will follow up. While the emergency accommodation system is undoubtedly under strain, emergency accommodation will be found for people who really need it.

The real answer for us as a country is to build more public housing. That is what we are back to doing now at scale as a country. There will be about 9,000 direct build social houses this year by our councils and approved housing bodies. That is what will help to provide permanent homes for people who are currently on the housing list and in some cases, unfortunately, are in emergency accommodation because they are effectively homeless. It is an absolute priority for the Government to address that issue. The availability of hotel accommodation at this time, as we all know, is under strain due to various reasons, including the fact that we have accommodated a very large number of refugees who have come to our country fleeing war, which is the right thing to do, and we have obligations to them as well. However, it has placed the system under pressure. There can be no question about that. We are working very closely with a whole range of service providers in this sector. We are providing much funding to different service providers to ensure that people who are in real need are afforded accommodation into the future.

The key thing is to make progress on the supply of new homes across all of the different types, because that is ultimately the best way to relieve some pressure in the system. If we are building more homes and we have a flow of people going from one type of tenure to another, for example, if people on the list are receiving a council home, which are being built now at record numbers, that frees up capacity within the current emergency accommodation system for people who currently do not have accommodation.

We fully understand the scale of this challenge, which for so many people – the more than 10,000 in emergency accommodation - has reached a real crisis point. It is our priority to address that by increasing supply and providing the support from the Exchequer to all of the service providers, local authorities, approved housing bodies and the LDA to provide more cost rental, affordable purchase and social homes. We are making progress on that front. The Minister, Deputy Darragh O’Brien, will be laying out again in the days ahead further steps on affordable housing initiatives.

These families are facing this crisis now. People are walking into our constituency office, and I am sure every other Deputy is seeing that in his or her constituency office, with notices to quit and all sorts of housing problems. They have been told by the family support and emergency accommodation units that they are at capacity - they do not have anywhere to put them.

Either the Government gives a direction to the family support unit to pay whatever the hotels want or demand for accommodation or it suddenly gets vacant housing on board tomorrow. This situation is here and now. It cannot wait until houses are built in two or three years’ time.

In our area we are waiting for housing to be built in St. Michael’s Estate. That was raised in 2019 and we are still waiting for bricks to be put down on the ground. When the Minister talks about future housing, he is talking about in the future. There is a crisis now in emergency accommodation. The Government needs to address it before it gets worse.

It will be addressed. We acknowledge the strain that is there in relation to the provision of emergency accommodation at this time. I attend all of the housing Cabinet committee meetings where we go into detail on all of the strands of this. The Government is working collectively, using every resource available to us to make sure that accommodation generally is made available to meet all of the needs that are there. If people need emergency accommodation, they will get the support they need.

As I said, we are providing a huge amount of support through short-term rent supports. We want to move away from that because we want people to have security of tenure and we want the State to be getting better value than paying hundreds of millions of euro in short-term rental supports.

We have to acknowledge that the dearth of rental accommodation is in part because of the number of landlords who have been leaving the system. We have to ask ourselves collectively why it is the case that thousands of landlords are making the decision at a time of high rents-----

Buy the properties.

Buy them.

-----to get out of the market. Those are questions that need to be answered as well because we need an adequate supply of rental accommodation, which currently is falling. It falls to us in this House to make decisions that ensure that is a continued adequate supply of rental accommodation in the private sector. It is an important part of the overall system.

Let us have the debate before the summer recess.