As the vote in the Dáil has now concluded, we are back to statements on homelessness. The Minister of State is most welcome to Seanad Éireann. The debate will take the normal pattern. The Minister of State will speak for ten minutes followed by group spokespersons for eight minutes. All other Senators have four minutes and the Minister will reply in or around 6.20 p.m.

It is an honour to be in the Seanad today to talk about such an incredibly important issue, that is, homelessness in Ireland. I will set out the new housing plan, Delivering Homes, Building Communities 2025-2030, which is building on the progress made in recent years to increase housing delivery across the board and social housing, in particular. The Minister, Deputy Browne, will conclude today’s discussion by outlining the many actions in the new housing plan that are targeted at ending homelessness.

The Government is acutely aware that homelessness is the single most pressing social issue that we face and of the impact that experiences of homelessness have on households and children, in particular. With this in mind, the programme for Government and the new housing plan reaffirmed Ireland's commitment to working towards ending homelessness by 2030. Increased supply is key to addressing homelessness. Last year saw the highest number of homes completed in more than a decade at more than 36,000. Delivering homes, building communities builds on the achievements and progress already made under Housing for All to further accelerate housing delivery. The key difference between Housing for All and this plan is a greater emphasis on creating the environment for more homes. To deliver more homes at speed, the State will indeed do more but this plan will also empower others, particularly the private sector, to play their part.

A significantly greater supply of housing can be achieved through a balanced approach focused on both directly supporting people to have a home of their own but also creating the best possible conditions for the industry to build and activate more homes. This new plan commits to the building of 300,000 new homes. By the end of 2030, there will be 72,000 additional new build social homes built for those in our society that need them most. Our goal remains a housing system that truly serves the needs of our people. This is why we are committed to also providing 90,000 affordable housing supports. Delivering homes, building communities is ambitious, but the Government is fully committed to making it a reality. This is an integrated housing and homelessness plan that reaffirms the whole-of-government approach to addressing the housing crisis. It will ensure that the funding and strategies deployed to address housing and homelessness are fully aligned at all times.

Direct funding for housing is at record levels. In 2026 alone, over €9 billion in capital funding will be provided through the Exchequer, the Land Development Agency and the Housing Finance Agency. A supply of housing and accommodation, in particular social, as well as affordable and private, remains the essential solution to addressing the challenges of homelessness and precarious living conditions in the longer term. A total of 36,284 new dwellings were completed in 2025. This represents a 20.4% increase on the same period in the previous year. This marks the highest number of completions recorded in any given year since the CSO began recording this data series in 2011. In 2025, a total of 9,089 new build social homes were constructed. This is the highest delivery level on record. It is an increase of 1,256 homes, or a 16% increase, compared to 2024. Over 42,000 new build social homes have been delivered between 2022 and 2025. The latest figures show that 3,423 new homes were commenced in February of this year, an increase of 232% compared to the same period last year. Combined with January’s figures, 5,469 new homes have commenced since the start of the year, an increase of 147% on the 2,214 units commenced during the same period in 2025. To put things in a clearer perspective, across 2024 and 2025 combined, a total of 85,723 units were commenced. This represents an increase of 43% compared with the combined total for the previous two-year period.

Delivering homes, building communities takes pragmatic action across a number of different policy areas to boost housing supply, while ensuring that the new homes delivered support people who need them most. These two key objectives provide the foundational pillars in the plan: activating supply and supporting people. The first pillar, activating supply, is about removing structural barriers to homebuilding and ensuring we deliver 300,000 new homes in the lifetime of this plan. This includes measures aimed at unlocking land, reforming planning, delivering infrastructure and creating the conditions needed to increase investment in housing supply. Reaching the target of 300,000 new homes will only be achieved through the individual and collective effort of the key delivery partners. Local authorities, together with approved housing bodies, the Land Development Agency and the construction sector will be critical to delivering and enabling the delivery of the quantum of homes needed over the lifetime of the plan. Central government will provide the policy, regulatory and funding frameworks to support housing delivery.

Further to this, delivering homes, building communities is enabled by the largest ever capital investment in the history of the State. A total of €275 billion will be invested over the next ten years under the national development plan to significantly upgrade our infrastructure and make the environment for building homes much better. This cannot be overstated. This includes almost €20 billion to supply the delivery of the 72,000 social homes and 90,000 affordable home supports over the next five years. It also includes €12.2 billion for water and wastewater services and €3.5 billion in equity funding for ESB Networks and EirGrid to make sure that we have the capacity in these vital services to make housing connections as and when they are needed. The Uisce Éireann investment is particularly significant.

In January this year, the Government announced a new multi-annual €1 billion housing infrastructure investment fund to support direct investment in housing enabling infrastructure. The new fund will be managed by the housing activation office and will complement investment by infrastructure agencies, such as Uisce Éireann and ESB Networks, as part of a more co-ordinated approach. It will focus on projects that can move quickly and at scale. We want strong, deliverable projects that can hit the ground running and start unblocking housing delivery immediately.

Housing delivery is at the centre of the revised national development plan. We are investing €102 billion over the next five years, an additional €33.9 billion on the previous NDP allocation. Overall investment of over €40 billion will be provided for housing and related water services to 2030. This funding will support vital water infrastructure projects, address historic bottlenecks in the system and accelerate us towards our delivery targets. Over the lifetime of the plan, we will deliver an average of 12,000 new social homes each year. This is an unprecedented commitment. In parallel, we will provide an average of 15,000 affordable housing supports annually through the starter homes programme and related initiatives.

The help to buy and the first home scheme continue to bridge the gap for first-time buyers struggling with deposits and mortgage limits. These schemes are not abstract policy instruments; they are enabling thousands of households to purchase their first home.

Budget 2026 has continued the record level of investment in social housing, with €2.9 billion in capital allocated to support the delivery of social homes by local authorities. This continued investment in the social housing programme will increase the supply of stock available to allocate to households on the social housing waiting list, including households in emergency accommodation.

The Government is not burying its head in the sand when it comes to homelessness. We are acutely aware there are far too many people in homelessness. Over 17,000 is unacceptable, and we as Government are trying to move every possible lever of the State to ensure we deliver homes at speed and at scale so that we can reduce these homelessness figures. We have significantly increased direct investment in addressing homelessness, but as well as that, we are enabling an environment where the public and private sectors can contribute to the solutions when it comes to homelessness. We appreciate people in emergency accommodation, people on our streets and people who find themselves in homelessness go through incredible difficulty – . We understand and appreciate the turmoil and how this upends their lives.

I assure the House - and the Minister, Deputy Browne, will elaborate on this in his closing statement - that as a Government, we are doing everything possible to ensure we can end homelessness in Ireland once and for all

I thank the Minister of State for his opening statement. He is correct in what he has said there on increased supply in addressing homelessness. They Government is focused on making sure everyone has access to good quality, affordable and secure homes that suit their needs. Over €9 million in capital funding will be made available this year alone.

The housing plan recognises that homelessness is the single most pressured social issue we face, and the Government has introduced several key measures to address homelessness, ensuring the implementation of these measures is a priority in 2026. Prevention of homelessness in the first instance is essential. The Department and the Government have many prevention initiatives under way. It is welcome that the Minister met with all the local authority chief executives last October and laid bare to them that our number one priority is housing delivery and breaking down the roadblocks. First and foremost, however, it is about ensuring people who need to stay in their homes can stay in those homes, are supported in their homes and that the local authority is there to support them and the Department is there to support the local authority.

While that is reassuring, he is also a Minister of action and funding. This includes the provision of social and affordable housing, HAP and homelessness HAP, and a strong tenancy protection legislation. To ensure a fully aligned all-of-government approach under the plan, we are committed to developing a national homelessness prevention framework, within which homelessness can be prevented in a structured and planned way with tailored prevention measures for each potential risk cohort.

It is also important to acknowledge that there are many elements to homelessness. There is the youth homelessness strategy, which has been in place for the past three years and has introduced a range of new measures, including housing supports for youth in shared accommodation schemes. Budget 2026 provided a total of €563 million to address homelessness, and this includes €513 million in current funding to ensure local authorities can provide sufficient emergency accommodation as well as essential related Housing First provisions for homelessness prevention support.

In all of the measures provided, it is very important that the staff on the front line of our local authority have a clear understanding of how situations can evolve and change, particularly in their own housing stock where people will present. I am on the Traveller committee, so I have first hand experience of hearing this from the Traveller community. Travellers present and sometimes, they do not feel their voices are heard from a domestic point of view. I ask that staff on the front line of our local authorities be very open and understanding of the need and that when situations evolve, women at risk need to be prioritised. We do it very well and we did it very well during Covid, but sometimes there are isolated cases where they do not feel their voices are being heard. We need to reflect on that. Where there is vulnerability and where children at risk, we need to think of that.

In the same way, we need to look at youth homelessness. It is an area we are addressing but I believe we have more capacity on it. I welcome the announcement from the Minister for higher and further education, Deputy Lawless, on what is happening around student accommodation. Much of the time when I hear about youth homelessness in Galway, I hear it at the start of the college year when young people cannot find accommodation.

Any levers that can be worked within the Department should be worked to find the opportunities to bring accommodation on stream, particularly for students going back to college. This is a real worry for parents when they let them go for the first time. The Department is working with the Minister, Deputy Lawless, on this and that is very welcome, particularly for kids who have to travel a long distance and do not have the luxury of the bus or car home. Not sleeping rough and pretending everything is okay just to be at college is not enough.

I also worry about those who are in irregular tenancies that have never been regularised, but the laws the Government has brought in in the past six months have given landlords the security for tenure, knowing where they stand, with the same for the tenant. From what the Minister of State has said there, from the notes he has provided and from the investment of €9 million, I know a lot of funding is going into it. He is right that 17,000 people on a homelessness list is nothing we are proud of but Government is working to ensure we can reduce it at all times.

Before I call on the next speaker, I welcome guests of the Minister of State, Deputy Grealish, who are here for the world Parkinson's association conference, which is being held in the Powerscourt Hotel in the next few days: Professor David Burn, president of University of Galway; Dr. Susan Fox, president-elect from Toronto; Dr. Jennifer Gorman, secretary of Barrow Neurological Institute, Chicago; Professor Marcello Merello, secretary-elect of head movements disorders from Buenos Aires, Argentina; Professor Carolyn Sue, president-elect and chair of neurodegeneration from the University of New South Wales, Sydney; Professor Victor Fung, past president from Sydney; and Jenny from Milwaukee, as well as Zack, Kay and Aileen.

They are most welcome to Seanad Éireann and I thank them for all the valuable work they do in relation to Parkinson's. We are delighted to have them here.

I thank the Minister of State for being here.

In 2016, I was asked to present to the Oireachtas housing and homelessness committee, as it was back then. It was long before I knew what a Senator was and long before I became one, but I tried to make a difference in the area of marginalisation and homelessness, and I helped to set up an organisation called Tiglin. We were asked to appear before the housing committee and we spoke to the then Minister, Simon Coveney, who gave an undertaking that homelessness would be eradicated by 2020. Homelessness and emergency accommodation numbers at the time were around 6,000. Now, ten years later, and this is not to criticise anybody but just to say, we are at nearly three times that level in emergency accommodation. We have over 17,000 homeless people now, with more than 5,500 of those being children.

When I entered this House last March, there were 15,286 people in emergency accommodation and I wrote it on my whiteboard. I thought, "Let us see that number coming down." Now, I get the numbers - I see Ailbhe Conneely from RTÉ putting them up - and I go "Oh no, this is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy of negativity and we are losing a generation." The numbers are nearly losing their meaning, so we have to be careful of that. Behind these numbers are children who are growing up in hotel rooms, doing their homework in bathrooms and who have no kitchen.

It is not just homelessness here. We are losing out with a lot of childhoods being compromised. There is the potential to stunt growth before it even begins. Recently at the Lighthouse, our homeless cafe on Pearse Street where I usually do Thursday evenings, a family came in who were living on Gardiner Street. They are in a family hub. They had a social house, but the father had complex needs, and he fell behind with the rent. The rent arrears were approximately €14,000, which cannot be allowed either. The father, mother and two children were made homeless. The young guy came in with his mother and they were looking for food and I got talking to him. He wanted to be a basketball player. He plays basketball in Tallaght and that is his dream. Unfortunately, he is now living in the hub in Gardiner Street but is commuting to play basketball. Surely to goodness there is a better way and a better solution. I have met and sat with these families. I have seen children trying to grow up like that. We are failing them today and I certainly feel we are shaping their future.

I mentioned I was at Tiglin at lunchtime. The reality we encounter on the front line is that some people are working but cannot afford to pay rent and eat so they are taking advantage of the food circumstances. We also have the residential supported housing, which is vital for people with a dual diagnosis of mental health issues, addiction, etc. The report today by Ailbhe Conneely on RTÉ highlights the number of deaths among homeless people. In 2022, 124 people died. That is slightly down from 133 in 2021 but these are people who have died alone on the streets. That also shows that too many people are falling through the cracks, particularly those with dual diagnosis where it is a housing issue, a health issue and an addiction issue. However, none of those services are joined up and they have to be. Ailbhe Conneely's report shows that we have to reflect on the figures and ask what is going wrong. Everybody should have the opportunity to access recovery, stability, housing and be supported. I have also seen the good side of the Lighthouse where we feed up to 500 people per day.

A couple of weeks ago I was at the Merrion Hotel across the road from these Houses for a wedding. I cannot afford lunch in the Merrion Hotel, never mind a wedding. It was the wedding of a guy I met when he was homeless and living in St. Stephen's Green. He came to us as a service user. He had no education, so we got him into college. He started a degree. He did a master's degree and another master's degree. He managed to do well and got married in the Merrion Hotel a couple of weeks ago. When the opportunity is given, the bed that is offered becomes stability. Stability becomes education and education leads to employment, which then offers dignity. That chap will be here tomorrow. His story is well-known so I am not divulging secrets. He will be in the audiovisual room tomorrow as CEO of a national organisation giving a presentation. It is at 10.30 a.m. tomorrow if anybody is able to get around. I have mentioned it to Senator Tully.

A lot of people who use services like Tiglin hear that Ireland is one of the wealthiest countries in Europe. They hear that we have a strong economy, but when people are in emergency accommodation or the family hub on Gardiner Street, they do not feel it. They feel totally different from everybody else who has been mentioned in this strong economy. It is essential we bridge that gap and acknowledge and deal with what people are actually experiencing through supportive housing opportunities. That is what I put to the committee in 2016.

The Simon Community’s report was also released yesterday. It was all about how single adults, mainly males, are falling through the cracks. It is impossible to get accommodation. One-bedroom apartments are not being built. A lot of people on the Simon Community’s report did not come into the system the way we might think. They came through broken marriages and failed job opportunities, etc. It amounts to over 3,000 in a year, according to that report. A lot of those people are in accommodation for over a year, yet it is emergency accommodation. Emergency should be short term, but this is not emergency. It is long term. They are stuck there. HAP is not working for many. Yesterday I got an email from a guy who is entitled to HAP. However, the HAP amount he is being given will not get him anywhere in his area. It is impossible, so he is in a hostel and stuck in limbo. It is a complex situation. From my situation of dealing with people going into rehab, we get people off the streets who have addiction issues. We get them into rehab and try to get them sober. Then, where do we send them? We cannot send them back to where they got sick in the first place. We try to do supported housing. The supported housing we have is temporary and is a year. Now that is clogged up because we have nowhere to send them afterwards. When I see 17,000 homeless people in a country our size with the resources we have. I think this is a problem that should not be too hard to solve. We took in over 120,000 Ukrainians and we did it with the click of a finger because we all got together with joined-up thinking. That same co-ordination is needed today.

What do we need to do? We need more social housing. We also need more one-bed homes. I am involved in Bluebell Community Council. We are doing one-bed housing over there. We also need services that work together like mental health, addiction and homeless supports. If we act properly and get that together, we will look back in years to come and say that the Minister, Deputy Browne, was one of the most successful housing Ministers ever. We do not want to lose a generation and that is what we are doing. I certainly do not want to be here in ten years listening to the increasing homeless numbers. Not only do we need to give these people a roof, but we need to give them a real chance like Jay Bobinac who was in the Merrion Hotel a couple of weeks ago.

I welcome the Minister to the House. I salute my colleague Senator McCarthy for his practical contribution in this area. It is admirable. My family has an association with this question that I am proud of. My son, Eoghan, has worked for the past couple of years for the McVerry Trust in Dublin as a social care worker with the homeless. I am particularly proud of that involvement, and it makes me acutely aware of a number of the issues from conversations with him. He is passionate about these questions.

I will make a few formal comments. No one in this House is comfortable with the current homelessness figures. Every individual or family without a secure home represents a failure of systems, of supports and of supply. We must recognise both the progress that has been made and the scale of what still needs to be done. The reality is that housing delivery is moving in the right direction with supply increasing across social, affordable and private housing. That matters because ultimately the only sustainable way to reduce homelessness at scale is to build more homes. However, if we are serious about making a lasting impact, we must go further in accelerating delivery, removing barriers and ensuring that the entire system, from planning to infrastructure, can sustain that growth.

On social housing, we need to continue scaling up delivery while also building smarter. That means expanding modern construction methods so homes can be delivered faster and more efficiently. It means maximising the potential of State-owned land through the Land Development Agency. It also means strengthening project management capacity within local authorities so delays between planning, procurement and construction are minimised. In that context, I am proud that Cavan and Monaghan have a good record on social housing but one is never comfortable that one has enough. Social housing is not just about units; it is about stability. When a family has a secure home everything becomes more possible. Children do better in school, parents can focus on work and communities become stronger and more settled.

Investing in social housing is investing in opportunity, dignity and the long-term health of our society and I am a great believer that we need to focus big in there.

On affordable housing, we need to scale up what is already working. The first home scheme is helping first-time buyers bridge the affordability gap and it has a good pick-up. While affordable purchase schemes deliver through local authorities and the Land Development Agency, LDA, is creating mixed sustainable communities, the vacant property refurbishment grant is another practical measure that is delivering. The recent croí cónaithe scheme has been a big success and the help-to-buy scheme is important in terms of a tax rebate. Across towns and villages, buildings are being brought back into use, quickly adding supply while revitalising communities. These are tangible effective tools and the priority now is to expand them, simplify access and ensure they are delivered at scale.

In the private housing sector, viability and certainty remain key. We need a planning system that provides clarity and predictability rather than delay and risk. We also need to continue incentivising the activation of vacant and derelict properties, which can be brought back into use far more quickly than new-builds. At the same time, we must ensure that regulatory and cost pressures do not unintentionally stall development. If we want private supply to increase, the system must support builders to build. As the Government cannot finance the entire investment needed to fund the level of housing requirement, we need that investment. Therefore, the private sector, twinned with the other areas, is critical to helping us build our way out of the housing crisis.

This brings me to the wider reforms under way. Increasing housing supply is not just about funding. It is about having a system that can deliver efficiently. Planning reform is central to that effort and significant attempts have been made recently. We need statutory timelines, streamlined judicial reviews and a modernised planning authority all helping to reduce delays and increase certainty. Infrastructure investment is equally critical. Homes cannot be delivered without water, wastewater, transport and utilities and that must match what is going on in the building. Government investment in these areas is already unlocking development and enabling more sustainable, higher density communities. Through regeneration funds, towns and cities are also being revitalised in a planned and co-ordinated way. Housing delivery depends on a system that works from end to end and these reforms are essential to making that happen.

Even with all of this, homelessness is not solely a housing supply issue. For many, it is the end point of a complex chain of disadvantage. Addiction remains a significant driver, with individuals caught in cycles of substance misuse often finding it extremely difficult to sustain tenancies or rebuild stability in their own lives. Our response must be routed in support for these people. That means better integration between addiction services and housing supports as well as expanding access to long-term recovery accommodation that allows people to rebuild their lives in a stable, supported environment. Mental health is another critical factor. A significant proportion of those experiencing long-term homelessness are living with untreated or undertreated mental health conditions. For too long, services have been fragmented, allowing people to fall through the cracks. We need a system that is integrated, community based and responsive, one where mental health and addiction supports are delivered together and where intervention happens early rather than at a crisis point.

We must continue to increase housing supply across the social, affordable and private sectors. That is essential, but it is not sufficient on its own. If we are serious about reducing homelessness, we must match increased supply with deeper supports tackling addiction, improving mental health services and ensuring that no one is left behind by a system that is meant to support them. Homelessness is a challenge we can address with the right investment and the right determination and it behoves us all to try to do that.

Before I call on the next speaker, I welcome Jane and Peter Maher from the Ballyglunin development to the Seanad this afternoon, along with my good colleague Deputy Albert Dolan. I also see Deputy Martin Kenny arriving with some of his friends and guests as well this evening. Not to leave anybody out, they are all very welcome.

In the Sinn Féin slot, I call Senator McCormack. Is the Senator sharing time?

Yes, with Senator Andrews.

Is that agreed? Agreed.

Homelessness has become normalised in Ireland. That is the sad fact we are dealing with. I want to bring the House back to 2014, when it was already widely acknowledged that we were in the midst of a housing crisis. The tragic death of Jonathan Corrie just outside Leinster House shocked people and caused outrage. Mr. Corrie's death was described as a national disgrace. More beds were promised, a night café was established to give homeless people somewhere safe to go and there was talk of how the Government's 2013 promise to end long-term homelessness by 2016 might be achieved. In case someone is looking at this debate on "Reeling in the Years", we are now in 2026 and this has not happened.

As I am in this Chamber here, I received a message from my local bin company telling me my bin charges will go up from May 2026. I got a message yesterday from my local bus operator that brings my child to school telling me the bus fee will go up by another €5. We wonder how we have this.

Many more homeless people since Jonathan Corrie have died on our streets. There has been less outrage, less surprise and, even worse, even less effective action by successive Governments. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have been in government for ten years, first through a confidence-and-supply arrangement in 2016 and then in two formal coalition Governments. During that decade, 55,000 adults have been forced into homelessness. These are the real figures. The 2016 census showed that just under 7,000 people were homeless in Ireland. Ten years on, here we are with record numbers, rising month on month. We are now at 17,300 recorded as homeless. Nobody is shocked any more. We are having statements on it in the Seanad. Sadly, homelessness is normalised. There continues to be chronic underinvestment and underdelivery in social and genuinely affordable homes. Each housing plan the Government comes up with contains low social and affordable housing targets, targets that are, even at that, consistently missed each year. This is the legacy. It is difficult to listen to how the Government is doing everything it can to fix this. The facts are there. It is not happening.

I will talk about prevention measures because I want to try to let people out there feel there could be solutions. People often ask, "What would Sinn Féin do if they were in government?" I want to talk about where you could put investment right now, and that is in homelessness prevention. Prevention measures would reduce long-term reliance on emergency accommodation and break the cycle of homelessness before it begins. Instead, we see frustrating statistics such as that in 2024 local authorities spent 18 times more on emergency accommodation than on homelessness prevention and supports. This reactive approach is both expensive and ineffective in addressing the root cause of homelessness. The Minister needs to start addressing the key drivers of homelessness - the biggest one at present is the private rental market - but instead he brought forward the rent hike legislation last month.

I am not exaggerating when I say that I have seen a significant increase in the number of families and individuals from Laois who are now facing homelessness in six months' time, because in recent weeks they have received an eviction notice. This is not a coincidence. I was told in this House that this would not happen. In Laois there are 1,512 people on the housing list. A total of 34% of those households are relying on private rental accommodation through HAP. That is 511 tenancies in Laois. I could stand here and speak all day about the failures in homelessness, but I am asking this Government to please put its head down and look properly at what it can do because we cannot normalise homelessness anymore.

I thank the Minister of State. It is really important to have statements on homelessness and the new housing policy, Delivering Homes, Building Communities. The people I meet and the people who call my office every single day, some of them crying, upset and requiring additional support services, do not see any delivery of homes. We just have to look at the family hubs. In the north inner city you can see the huge number of hotels and the family hubs. They are all behind the statistics the Minister of State came out with. There is no sense that homes are being delivered. When we look at 17,000 people homeless, the evidence suggests the Government has given up trying to solve the housing crisis and the homelessness crisis because its members talk about levers, commitments and plans, but the reality is the people sleeping in doorways around the city and down along the quays do not see any delivery of homes.

The Government talks about affordable homes. A total of 550 homes were due to be delivered on the Irish Glass Bottle site in Ringsend. It claims those 550 homes are all going to be affordable - that is debatable - but there will be affordable rental. Families, almost certainly from the area - ordinary working families with average pay - will not be able to afford to live in those so-called affordable homes on the Irish Glass Bottle site.

The other part of that housing policy is building communities. The only community it seems to be building is a homeless community. There are 5,000 children in homeless accommodation as a result of the failures of this Government; 5,000 children who have no home to go to and have no prospect of a home under this Government. We have a situation where the Minister for housing has not met the Irish Glass Bottle Housing Action Group. The group has gone through four housing Ministers and this Minister will not meet them. He has refused to meet the residents in Pearse House, even though he pulled the regeneration programme there.

Homelessness is solvable - it absolutely is solvable - but it is not solvable if there is no commitment to invest in public housing and to developing social housing. The Irish Glass Bottle site was a perfect example of a site where the Government could have put public housing. The Government sold off Camden Yard when it was under the Department of education's brief. The buyers went bankrupt and now it seems there is public housing going to go on that site. Why did the Government not just put public housing on it in the first place? The Government does not have a commitment. It does not have a handle on addressing the homeless crisis.

Is Senator Cosgrove sharing time?

Yes. Time will be shared between three of us.

Is that agreed? Agreed.

The Minister of State is very welcome. It has been said here before that we all know people who have found themselves homeless who never in their wildest dreams would have imagined they would be in that situation. In February, as was said, there were 17,300 people homeless, including almost 5,500 children. That does not include people sleeping on couches and in spare rooms with friends or family, which often happens in rural areas. It also does not include rough sleepers.

We know that the biggest cause of homelessness is people being evicted from private rental, and we can see as a direct result of the residential tenancies Bill that 43% of homeless figures are made up of people who have been given notices to quit. Just this week, on the train to Dublin, I was approached by a young mother from Leitrim who works in a Government Department. She has been issued with a notice of termination from a landlord whom she rented from for five years. The week before it was a family who have been in long-term rental through the local authority and the landlord decided to sell. The week before that it was a single woman who successfully maintained a tenancy for 14 years. The week before that it was a single man expressing suicidal ideation because of his homelessness. A friend of mine with children has lived in a tenancy for 14 years. Her children have lived with her and grown up there and they have been served with an eviction notice. An elderly lady living in rural Ireland, down the road in Sligo has been served with a notice from her landlord, whom she still describes as being very decent to her. Homelessness has become normalised. I know the Minister of State is very aware of the following and has been instrumental, and I am very appreciative of that, as are the people in Sligo and Enniscrone. However, for anyone who does not know this, six households of elderly and disabled people got a notice to quit, an eviction notice from our retirement village in Enniscrone. What kind of society have we come to if we are coming to that?

We know that when children are denied a home and physical shelter, it not only affects their development at the time but it can cause developmental regression. As a party, we have been in government, as have Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, and there does not seem to be a sense of urgency. Senator McCormack spoke about Jonathan Corrie. I remember when he died. We can all remember that, and it was shocking. When Labour left Government in 2016, homelessness was at 6,000 people. It was being treated as an emergency by then Minister, Deputy Kelly. In just ten years, homelessness levels have soared by almost 150%. A construction company is something we have been calling for for a long time, and to go back on the reset clause. That has caused mayhem.

This will never be normal. This has been caused by poor decision making on the part of the Minister of State's party and that of Fine Gael.

The Government speaks about the progress it is making on housing, and I appreciate that is something it feels it has to do, but it is meaningless for a lot of us in the face of the growing number of evictions we see and the people entering homelessness. It is a very different reality from the updates we hear from both of the Ministers who have been in the room. The reality we hear is fear of an eviction notice, not being able to afford rent in a cost-of-living crisis, of overcrowding, and of the hidden homeless who are living in their parents' homes. It is not being able to leave a domestic violence situation because there is simply nowhere to go. The official homeless figures are increasing all the time - we all know that - and we know that is actually only part of the problem, because there are so many more people who are experiencing hidden homelessness and who are not counted in those figures.

At the same time, let us talk about dereliction and vacant properties. In Carlow-Kilkenny, there are almost 2,000 vacant properties lying empty when we know so many families are struggling to find somewhere to live. We have homes without families and families without homes. That is ridiculous in the crisis we are in. There are 2,000 homes lying empty and vacant in Carlow-Kilkenny in one of the worst housing crisis emergencies. Why do we not have a vacant property tax with teeth that actually stops people allowing these homes and properties to stand empty?

According to the Residential Tenancies Board, more than 5,200 eviction notices were issued in just the final three months of last year, a 41% increase on the previous year. Over the year, more than 20,000 tenants received notices to quit. We heard a lot in the Minister of State, Deputy O’Sullivan's contribution about social housing and that is obviously important, but it is also about public housing. There are plenty of people who have the salaries. It is not that they need the support from the State to rent somewhere; they have the money to rent. They have the money to buy, but there is simply nowhere to rent or buy. In Carlow, for example, in 2024 there were two affordable homes available or built - two in all of Carlow in 2024.

The Social Democrats have continued to point out the successive failures and issues with our housing policy.

The housing crisis is not new, it is systemic and it has become normalised. As we have heard from other Senators, we just accept these figures every week. We have an over-reliance on the private sector. There is no ban on no-fault evictions. The new rent controls have actually led to people being evicted, as we said would happen. There were 36 evictions in Wexford two days before the Bill came in, for example. There are more than 8,600 entire homes listed on Airbnb in Ireland with short-term lets now vastly outnumbering the number of long-term rentals in many areas. In communities across Carlow-Kilkenny, people can see exactly what is happening. Homes are vacant or are being used for short-term profit and tenants are being pushed out through rising evictions. There is no mystery here. It is the direct chain of cause and effect, Government policy, more evictions and rising homelessness.

It feels as though I am banging my head off a brick wall when I am talking about housing and homelessness. It feels like Groundhog Day every month when new homeless figures are released on a Friday afternoon to avoid maximum media exposure. More than 17,000 people are recorded as homeless. Those represent lives on pause, lives stunted, children living in hotels and doing their homework on hotel floors and not being able to play with their friends. It involves shame for people that does not belong to them, as well as poverty and exclusion. It also involves trauma that we have to deal with collectively as a society. People living in homelessness are more likely to become sick. They suffer chronic stress levels that we in this House or in the Houses of the Oireachtas cannot imagine.

I will talk about some other statistics which may show that many people within the Oireachtas are out of touch with what is actually happening in relation to homelessness. Only 3% of Members of the Oireachtas are renting, that is, eight people, according to a survey by The Irish Times last year, compared with one in three households in Ireland. One in five TDs or 25%, identify as landlords, as compared to between 5% and 7% of the general population. One in three TDs own a second property, be that a home, another rental or land. In the real world, this is simply not the case. We need to ensure we are in touch when making legislation affecting people's lives. One in five children in this country are living in poverty. One in eight people over 65 are living in poverty. That rises to 40% for those renting. We need to protect renters to ensure they are not falling into homelessness. There were 20,000 evictions in 2025. Single people are the fastest group falling into homelessness. I do not know what we are going to do but this is not moving in the right direction.

I call Senator Alice-Mary Higgins, who is sharing time with Senator Flynn. Is that agreed? Agreed.

We have heard the stark figures everybody has been outlining. The sad thing is homelessness is related to, flows from and has been accepted for far too long as an unfortunate side consequence of Government policy, which has focused constantly on the property market and on housing and development, rather than on the issue of housing as homes and as shelter. The figures are stark. I will focus on the period from July 2014 when there were 3,258 people homeless. In March 2026 there were 17,308. That is a 431% increase. We need to cut through the narrative that we have been doing our best and we are picking up the pace. It has been getting worse over the period while the same parties were in government and constantly taking a similar approach. The official figures indicate a 431% increase in those in emergency accommodation and a 628% increase in children in emergency accommodation over the past ten years. Those figures do not include those in State emergency homeless accommodation, those in own-door temporary accommodation or those in domestic violence refuges. They do not include asylum seekers or those sleeping rough. They do not include the thousands of hidden homeless who are staying with friends and families in insecure situations. They do not include those with disabilities or older people who are in congregated settings that are unsuitable for them because those with disabilities should be accommodated under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UNCRPD, that we passed, being supported in independent housing. Those people do not feature. There is a line in the new strategy on disability and housing that I welcome. However, that does not feature in these stark figures. These are the missing pieces. Those shocking figures are in fact worse.

Alongside that we have to look at the money-making and the fact that average rent since 2014 has doubled and house prices have increased by 91% in less than ten years. Wages have not doubled. No other aspect of life has doubled for people but rent and house prices have doubled. This is the tension because the Government has consistently focused on supporting the housing market and those whose goals, legitimate goals from a shareholder's perspective, are about making the most out of the property market. The Government has constantly gone to those same people and asked them what would they like. They want what makes them more profits: fewer sticks, less pressure, less regulation, lower standards and public subsidies for private profit-making. Time and again that has been given. The rules have been bent or abandoned, capital gains tax waivers here, suspension of normal planning process there and it has not delivered.

I welcome the recognition of the need for direct delivery now. There is a fundamental issue in that the new strategy still has the language of old build programmes. It mentions that they cannot rely on Part V and turnkeys because they are negated by conditions. The former Minister, Paschal Donohoe was always praised for his supposed fiscal prudence, yet he missed a five-year window during which the EU fiscal rules were suspended, when the State could and should have invested in housing and when the Opposition was crying out for it. In that five-year period, zero percent loans were available. We heard repeatedly that we need private investment and private investment will have to be encouraged. Private investment is encouraged by making sure it is not paying taxes back to the State at the same level and by making sure developers get their money back for connections. This is all public subsidising to bridge what has been called the viability gap. In fact, the State could have been building. It had a surplus and a suspension of the fiscal rules, it had access to zero percent financing and wasted that five-year period. It has again become a discussion about the viability gap and how to get private finance moving. That needs to be acknowledged when we move forward. There is still a huge focus on mobilising private investment and not on public investment. That public investment is now in a more difficult circumstance than it would have been if we had taken the opportunity when it was there.

Another opportunity was there in 2017, when our group brought forward legislation on vacant properties. That is almost a decade ago. We were told it was constitutionally difficult to do anything in that area.

However, we still see a bad plan. Regarding vacant properties, it is still the plan that local authorities are meant to track them down. One of the big gaps is that this money does not go back into local authorities. If that money were allowed to become part of the fund that local authorities could then use to develop for housing, that would have made a difference in terms of the appallingly poor application of derelict housing and vacant property taxes.

I will finish by talking about the quality of emergency accommodation. The Department does not give us the figures for how long, but we know 3,000 single households have been in it for more than one year while 1,400 have been in emergency accommodation for more than two years. Many families are raising children in emergency accommodation that is not appropriate or developmentally safe for children. The Barnados report has been clear on this. In his response, will the Minister of State talk about how he will address this in the delivery of housing and how he will address those forgotten groups, including asylum seekers, migrants, those with disabilities and other groups? Will he talk about how he plans to address the issue of emergency accommodation, its quality and people's rights within it? Will he elaborate on the focus on new-build programmes and the move away from Part V and turnkey pieces? Whenever there is a recession, that is when we see those projects and those public-private partnerships fold and social housing so often takes the hit. How will we ensure that we are doing direct build? Is a State construction company still on the table?

Many people have referred to the numbers of homeless, which continually rise. There are over 17,000 at this stage, including nearly 5,500 children. Worryingly, more and more people over 65 are facing homelessness. The fact that older people, who have lived their lives and contributed so much to the State, can find themselves in emergency accommodation is a terrible indictment of this State.

I commend Cavan County Council, which does huge work in trying to prevent people from going into homelessness. The council is successful but, unfortunately, it just cannot accommodate everybody and some people have to be put in emergency accommodation. Cavan does not have any hostel. It has two bed and breakfasts that the council uses as emergency accommodation for families. Beyond that, it has to send people to the hostel in Dundalk run by the Simon Community or down to a bed and breakfast in Roscommon. People do not want to go because they are too far away and are very hard to get to. There is no good transport route to those places and people want to stay in their own county. What happens then is that we see a lot of hidden homelessness, with people sofa-surfing or staying in their parents' box room. I see quite a number who are sleeping rough at times and then maybe staying on their friend's sofa at other times. Increasingly, a large number of young men are affected. Single people tend to be on the housing waiting list the longest. I am trying to help number of young men at the moment, many of whom have addiction problems. Some of them have been in and out of prison. It is a chicken and egg situation. There is no out for them. There are no community-based supports, wraparound supports or the addiction or mental health supports they need to sustain a tenancy. Until we have those supports, they are going to continue to be in and out of prison causing problems in society. Some of them will actually say they sometimes end up getting sent to prison on purpose because they want somewhere warm and dry to sleep and to get a few meals, which is terrible. We need to incorporate Sharing the Vision, the mental health strategy, into our homelessness prevention framework as well, put those wraparound supports in place for people who require them and ensure they can enjoy a sustainable tenancy.

I have also come across a number of care leavers who are not getting the required support to get them into accommodation either. This is an already very vulnerable group who have been in the care system, maybe with different foster families, and are now are out on their own. They not getting sufficient support and some of them are ending up homeless as well and sleeping rough.

Senator Higgins mentioned people in congregated settings and I absolutely agree with her. It also brings to mind the Before I Die campaign. This involves a large number of adults with intellectual disabilities or autism in their 20, 30s, 40s or 50s who are living with elderly parents. These adults are on the housing list but are not being accommodated, not because the the local authority is not willing to accommodate them but because the HSE is not willing to put in the care and support plan. We need to see an awful lot more co-operation between local authorities and HSE to ensure the supports are put in for those people to be able to live independently. If a parent is no longer able to provide the care or passes away, that vulnerable person is put into emergency accommodation or an emergency residential setting, which is often far away from family and friends and their day service. The person is trying to cope with grieving for a lost parent as well as a new living arrangement, which is very unfair.

Many families who are above the social housing threshold and have received eviction letters do not qualify for social housing or any other supports but cannot afford the enormous rents being asked for private rented accommodation and are left in limbo. They are not earning enough to look for a mortgage but they are earning too much to be on the social housing list. A lot of families are caught in that loophole and we need to address that without delay.

The Minister of State has to be called to reply at 6.20 p.m. but he now has to go for a vote in the Dáil.