The government’s abysmal record in tackling the housing and homeless crisis is exposed once more today with new figures showing that households are spending almost a fifth of their budgets on housing, Social Democrats co-leader Catherine Murphy said this morning.

Deputy Murphy was commenting on CSO statistics showing that the proportion of household expenditure on housing has more than doubled, from 9.6 per cent to 19.4 per cent, since the period of 1999-2000. The statistics are part of detailed results of the 2015-2016 Household Budget Survey.

Deputy Murphy said:

“Today we see another set of distressing statistics that expose the government’s abysmal record on housing and homelessness. Families are pinned to their collars to keep roofs over their heads and to pay for health, childcare and education services.”

Deputy Murphy’s remarks come amid reports that the Minister for Housing Eoghan Murphy will today admit that the government will not meet its own target of having all homeless families moved out of emergency accommodation by the end of this month.

Deputy Murphy added:

“The Minister for Housing is barely a week in office and here he is admitting to failure. In fact the June target was never a realistic one because this government has not put enough energy and resources into boosting housing supply. Today we learn that the Minister is planning more family hubs – but what people so desperately need and want are family homes.

“The homeless crisis really reached a new low this week when we learned that homeless families were put up in a hotel in Dublin city that was a fire safety hazard. After what we have seen with the Grenfell Tower fire, you have to ask how on earth was it considered acceptable to put homeless children and parents in Lynam’s Hotel which had faulty alarm panels and padlocks on its emergency exits? The inhumanity of this speaks volumes about the attitude of this government to the most vulnerable people in our communities.”

ENDS

22 June 2017

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