1600 children in emergency accommodation

The best place for a child is in his or her home, but it is a damning indictment on this Government that 1,600 children are not residing in their homes but in emergency accommodation, Fianna Fáil Deputy Robert Troy told the Dáil.  This, he said, is because of policies that this Government has pursued.

Speaking during Question Time, Deputy Troy said he was truly shocked by Minister James Reilly’s reply to a parliamentary question he submitted where the Minister clearly abdicated his responsibility for what his Department was doing to support people and children who are living in emergency accommodation.

“It is not right to say that Tusla, the Child and Family Support Agency, is just about taking children into care,” he said. “Tusla is a new agency that was set up to support families, and we need to support these families who are living in emergency accommodation. I am not the only one to say this: we know that the Government's response to the homelessness crisis has been questioned by two international UN committees, most recently the one on the rights of the child, which the Minister himself attended. We talked about the rights of the child and on voting to enshrine the rights of our children in our Constitution three years ago. Surely the most basic, fundamental right is that of children to have a home.”

In response, Minister James Reilly said he accepted that this is a major problem and that it has got worse. “Child poverty is a priority for the Government to address and, like many things, it takes time to address,” he said. “We all know, ultimately, that the relief and resolution of this problem lies in increasing supply and not building houses where nobody wants to live.”