Homelessness conditions not acceptable, says Howlin

Minister for Public Expenditure Brendan Howlin has said the situations depicted in RTÉ's My Homeless Family programme on Monday night were "not acceptable".

Speaking on his way into Cabinet on Tuesday morning, he said the next government’s “absolute objective” would be to ensure such conditions are eradicated.

He said when the Coalition came to power the entire housing market had collapsed.

The first time the Government had any money, in 2014, it was the Coalition’s first social priority to allocate money to restart a social housing programme, he said.

“What we saw on the television last night is not acceptable. It’s not acceptable that the emergency accommodation provided is not fit for purpose and families should not be expected to live in those conditions,” Mr Howlin said.

“It will be an absolute objective, a social imperative of the next government, to ensure that those conditions are eradicated.”

He said the €4 billion this Government had allocated was beginning to make an impact.

Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney also said homelessness is a “huge issue” for Government.

“The real problem here is that we simply haven’t been building houses in the kind of numbers that we need to build them for the last five years because of an economic crash that happened under a previous government,” he said.

Mr Coveney said the Government wanted to build tens of thousands of social houses, “and we’ll do that if we get back into Government”.

Speaking on his way into Cabinet on Tuesday morning, Mr Coveney said homelessness was going to be one of the big challenges for the next administration, “whoever’s in charge”.

Referring to RTÉ’s My Homeless Family programme on Monday night, he said the situations depicted in the programme were “not good enough” and “not acceptable”.