I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill this afternoon. An Teachta Ó Broin has outlined in detail the Sinn Féin position on this legislation. I will say one thing, and this is more of a general point than a specific one, that at this early stage in the legislative process, the tabling of pages and pages of ministerial amendments is a little bit concerning. That is no disrespect to the people who put the work into drafting them, but it indicates a little bit of confusion, chaos and unpreparedness - I do not know what word you would use - on behalf of the Government. The issue of housing is so important and it is very important we get it right. However, this is not the only legislation relating to housing where a Bill has been published and then almost immediately we have got a raft of ministerial amendments. It is very sloppy and speaks to a Government that is effectively disinterested in the legislative process. It is also disrespectful to those spokespersons who want to engage with the legislation and the amendments. At this stage, there should not be pages and pages of ministerial amendments to this legislation. Best practice would say that work should be done before publication but, again, there was a rush to publish for reasons that are not clear to me. However, the Minister of State will have an opportunity in his concluding remarks to answer that. I ask myself a very simple question when I consider any legislation relating to housing. Will it help my constituents who are homeless, who are in emergency accommodation and who need stable, secure and affordable accommodation? For as long as I have been here, I have yet to see any legislation, aside from the Covid eviction ban, coming from Government that helps my constituents. In fact, in the ten years since I was elected, governments led by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael - taking turns - have made the housing and homelessness crisis much worse. One very effective measure we have to gauge how effective Government policy is are the lists it publishes every month with the number of homeless people. That in itself is very worrying. I have said before that it is not normal to publish a list of people who are homeless every single month. That certainly did not happen when I was growing up. I know the Government would love for us to normalise that level of homelessness, but we will not. I will ask a question of the Minister of State, who will have a chance in his remarks to address this. I will give him an example. There is a family living in my constituency - a mam, a dad and a son. They live in Balbriggan and the parents are both working locally. They are in private rental accommodation, have a notice to quit and are due out in September. I am working with them, and they have replied to hundreds of accommodation adverts at this stage, but they have nowhere to live. September will come fast. The Minister of State knows it himself. You think it is going to take ages but it does not; it goes in a flash. This family is faced with the prospect of having to go into emergency accommodation but the dad, in this instance, is gravely ill and undergoing medical treatment for cancer. He is getting chemotherapy at the moment. His doctor asks about his housing situation every time he goes in to see him because of the level of stress it causes him. He asks, "Where are you going to be?" because he has embarked on a treatment schedule that is going to take months. They have come to me - no other TD has an office in my area - and asked what emergency accommodation is like. The Minister of State knows it is not nice. He would not like to live in it and neither would l, but that is where they are heading. He cannot go there because of his medical condition, yet I cannot answer where they are supposed to go. The Minister of State might answer that for them in his remarks.

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