This week I spoke to a family from County Wicklow. The parents are Ciaran and Jessie Redmond. Their daughter was recently diagnosed with leukaemia. They are facing eviction. They were both self-employed, hard-working parents doing the best they can for their family. Unfortunately, Ciaran has been forced into taking some leave from his work to care for his daughter. They do not qualify for any support. They were offered emergency accommodation. Imagine caring for your child with leukaemia and living in emergency accommodation. A hard-working family who did everything right, a family with both self-employed parents, and they have been told by the Government to go to homeless accommodation. That is what is happening right across the country. This is Ireland in 2026 - too rich for social housing and too poor to survive in the private rental sector. That is what the Government's housing policies have done. In County Mayo, where evictions are spiralling out of control, the social housing support threshold is €30,000. Let us imagine trying to run a household, pay bills, pay rent and run a car on €30,000. Once upon a time, homelessness was associated with complex problems like addiction and so on. We are facing a new wave of homelessness and a new face of homelessness. That face is hard-working people. That face is the working poor. That is what the Government's policies have done. I see it every week in my constituency. The frightening thing is that most of the people who I have spoken to in my clinics across Mayo have never availed of any social supports in their lives. They are almost embarrassed to outline the situation. It is not those people who should be embarrassed; it is the Government. It has utterly failed housing. We could build housing in the 1930s and 1940s. Today we cannot because it is a cost crisis. The Government has allowed building inflation to spiral out of control. It has done almost nothing to alleviate this major difficulty. The legislation introduced last March made it even worse. I stood here in the Dáil before the vote and warned and urged the Minister to reconsider. I actually warned the Minister that this legislation would become known as the flight of the small landlord. It would lead to an avalanche of evictions. As night follows day, that is what has happened. Eviction notices have increased by 50%, reaching 7,000 evictions in the first three months of 2026. The reality when we break into those numbers is that 60% of all those are exiting the market.

Sentiment score: -0.10