I congratulate our new Social Democrats TD, Daniel Ennis, and Fine Gael’s new Deputy, Seán Kyne. I warmly welcome them to this Chamber. Dan is going to be a fantastic addition to our parliamentary party team. We are all so excited to work with him. This is a huge day for Dan, Seán and their families. I welcome their families and supporters to the Gallery. I especially welcome Dan’s mother, Jacqueline, his brother Geoff and his fiancé, Chloe. None of us would be in this Chamber today if we did not have the support of family, friends and party members. These are the people who knock on doors for us and keep us going through the hard times and families who are willing to make enormous sacrifices in order that we can be here. This essential support does not get enough recognition, so I wish to acknowledge it today. I thank our excellent candidate in Galway West, Míde Nic Fhionnlaoich, and everyone who voted for the Social Democrats on Friday. The front page of the Irish Daily Mail today reveals a shocking figure. The cost of emergency homeless accommodation reached nearly €500 million last year. That is a 570% increase in spending in just ten years. While we can measure the financial cost of soaring homelessness, we cannot measure the human cost. How many babies are struggling to learn to crawl right now because of a lack of space? How many toddlers are experiencing delayed speech development? How many children have become withdrawn or have fallen behind in school? How many of their parents have developed insomnia and depression? How many relationships have broken down because of the constant stress caused by their living conditions? The full extent of the trauma being created by homelessness is something we will never truly know, but we know the negative impact can be lifelong. It affects children’s development, education, mental and physical health, job prospects and relationships. A stable, secure home is the foundation for a happy life. That basic building block is missing for 17,500 people. This is especially an issue in Dublin Central, where a disproportionate amount of emergency accommodation is located. One tenth of the homeless population of Ireland – 1,700 people – are living on just one street, namely Gardiner Street. Across the constituency, it has been estimated that there are 7,000 people living in homeless accommodation. Has any small area in the country ever had to cope with such a disproportionate level of trauma, unmet need and State failure? These are people and an area that have been abandoned by successive Governments. They have been left to pick up the pieces of years of Government failure on housing. The response of this Government is not to help or reduce homelessness but to make the situation even worse and introduce new rent rules that have led to record rent increases. We need the Government to recognise that and change course, starting as a matter of urgency with a temporary ban on no-fault evictions and a ban on rent increases. Will the Taoiseach do that?

Sentiment score: -0.02

The Taoiseach needs to stop and listen to himself when he comes into this Chamber week after week and tries to spin a positive message on housing when there are 17,000 people homeless, including more than 5,000 children. This is at a time when there are record budget surpluses. The only thing the Taoiseach has changed in his approach is to start blaming migrants for that failure.

Sentiment score: -0.14

It is shameful. The Taoiseach talks about every metric and fails to mention the most important metric, which is the increase, month on month, and the records being broken in the number of people becoming homeless. Instead of acknowledging that the approach has failed and changing it, the Government introduced legislation that we all knew would increase evictions and rents, which is exactly what happened. Will the Taoiseach at least acknowledge the staggering increase? The only success the Government has had in terms of homelessness is to normalise it. I do not have any faith in Fianna Fáil to address this crisis and I do not think any of the electorate in either constituency where there was recently a by-election do either.

Sentiment score: -0.16