This morning, as part of the housing committee, I was downstairs for the launch of the homelessness report. I mentioned in this House before that I appeared before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Housing and Homelessness back in 2016, at which stage there were approximately 6,000 people in homelessness. The Minister for housing gave an undertaking that homelessness would be eradicated by 2020. The homeless report today deals with a trebling of those numbers in the past ten years. We have more than 17,500 in emergency accommodation, and the report is now saying we hope to eradicate homelessness by 2030. The timeline is fairly tight.

We need 300,000 houses by 2030. I know we are describing homelessness as a crisis but for me a crisis is something that is usually temporary and arrives suddenly. You declare an emergency, you deal with it, and then you move on. It is disconcerting that ten years later we are dealing with a trebling of the numbers. That should concern every one of us.

Today's report reflects many of the concerns I have spoken about in this House and which front-line organisations have spoken about too, such as the need to focus on prevention and tenant in situ schemes. We need to focus on the members of the older generation who are now entering into homelessness, and how the demographics of homelessness have changed. Through our outreach service at Tiglin at the Lighthouse, we meet people who are not from the group traditionally associated with homelessness. These are ordinary people who, through no full fault of their own, have lost their house because, for example, the landlord is selling the house. Families are becoming homeless, not because of addiction, mental health issues, etc, but because they have nowhere else to go when the house is sold.

The committee's report is very welcome but reports do not house people. We need definite action and urgency on that. Every day we delay more people are losing their home. More than 24,000 people have received eviction notices in the past year, since we changed the regulation. We owe them better than that.