Forty-first Amendment of the Constitution (Right to Housing) Bill 2026: Second Stage [Private Members] Dail Éireann — 2026-10-01 ============================================================ Thomas Gould (SF), Cork North-Central The First Dáil declared that it was the first duty of the Government of Ireland to ensure that no child suffered from a lack of clothing, food or shelter. This Government is failing in that duty. There are currently 17,885 people homeless. That was the August figure. It is actually higher now. Some 5,830 of those are children. I asked the Minister's predecessor how many children must become homeless before Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and this Government admit they are wrong and admit the crisis is at a stage where they have failed and where we need urgent action. How many children must become homeless? Must it be 6,000 or 7,000? Will the Minister give us an answer to that or is he just going to go on with the big lists that he gave? Regarding the lists that the Minister gave, none of them give a constitutional right to housing to people who should be entitled to it. The Minister is his failing in his duty because right now in Cork and Kerry there are 276 children in homeless accommodation. Many of these children left school in June for the summer not knowing where they were going to be living when school started back in September. These children are listening to their classmates looking forward to Hallowe'en, trick or treating and Christmas. Can the Minister imagine being a homeless child or teenager not knowing where he is going to be for Hallowe'en or Christmas? The shame and embarrassment they and their parents feel is not their fault. They should be ashamed to be homeless. It is the Minister who should be ashamed that there are so many children who are homeless. It is the Minister and this Government who should be ashamed of all the families and people who are homeless. Deputy Hearne is being forward a Bill. It is not going to guarantee people a right to a home but it is going to force this Government to do everything in its power to ensure that people have a home and it will be their constitutional right. How wrong is that? The Minister talked about how he is going to get on with doing the things he is going to do. Commitments were made before the previous election. Typical Fianna Fáil promised that there would be a referendum. I was on the previous housing committee where Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael members spoke about having a constitutional right to housing and to a family having a home. Now, they break their promises. Do not shake your head at me, Minister. That was promised. Fianna Fáil said it would support it. They are running for the hills now. Is the Minister saying they will never support a constitutional right to housing? I am talking to families, and it is heartbreaking. They are walking down streets and living in communities with boarded up council houses. There are thousands of them. I have asked the Minister repeatedly if he will give funding to local authorities to get all these houses back into use. To be fair to the Minister, he was straight and said "No". He said he would not provide all the funding required to get these back into use. Imagine the child and the teenager who are homeless and the trauma that is being caused by the homeless crisis. What we are bringing forward in and of itself will not solve the homeless crisis but it is will give people hope and an opportunity to know that they have rights. The Minister, however, is denying their rights by not supporting this. We have people who are facing eviction. I have a clinic every week. It is out the door with families looking for houses. We have people who are overstaying. The Government slashed the tenant in situ scheme. We have families now who are overstaying. Local authorities are telling them to overstay. Where are they going to go? Where are their rights? We have people who are on the waiting lists for years and years. How long is long enough to be waiting on the list? How long must people wait on the list? Is it five, seven, ten or 15 years? When does a person have a right? When does a family have a right to a home? There are two more important elements I want to talk about. There is action and there is policy, or there is action and there is principle. We may disagree on the actions the Government has taken but we believe that ordinary workers and families should come before speculators and developers. That a disagreement that we have. That is what we believe - people first. We want people to have an ability access affordable housing - truly affordable housing not the affordable housing the Government is talking about - and for no child or adult to be forced into homelessness. I hope we can agree on that. Terence MacSwiney, a member of the First Dáil and former Ardmhéara Chorcaí once famously said, " ... in matters of principle there can be no tactics, there is one straight forward course to follow and that course must be found and followed without swerving to the end." Deputy Hearne is not in here talking about tactics, and neither am I or others in the Opposition. We are trying to make a genuine change. Terence MacSwiney said this 100 years ago. The First Dáil said that children should have access to a roof over their heads. When we talk about people having a roof over their heads, it is not four walls and a roof. It is about a home. It does not matter if there are ten in the house or one in the house, everyone should have that right. We have children growing up without homes. It is the duty of this Government to stop that from happening. Every child should be able to grow up with a home. This work needs to be done and we should honour the legacy of the first Parliament and the Government should go ahead and deliver that. We talk about cherishing all the children of the nation but how can we do so when thousands of them are in emergency accommodation and there are tens of thousands of them in overcrowded accommodation, sharing homes and in boxrooms? It is a symbolic move to put this into the Constitution. However, it more than just symbolic in that it means something. The importance of a home cannot be ignored. My home is where my wife and I raised our two kids. We had some unbelievable days in that home and we had some really hard times over the years where we would come together and hug and cry but we had a home. So many people are in hotel rooms crying. So many parents are heartbroken because they are looking at their kids and wondering what their future is going to be. A home could be rented or private. We are not saying to give everyone a house. Deputy Hearne said a while ago that is not what we are saying. We are saying that everyone should have a constitutional right to be able to access housing. That would mean no local authority houses would be allowed to be boarded up for years. Regarding the number of vacancies, there are over 100,00 houses. Some people reckon that 160,000 houses are vacant right now. I have asked the Minister and his predecessor to walk the streets of Dublin or Cork with me. I will show him house after house that is empty. At the same time, we have families in crowded emergency accommodation. It is so disappointing that promises and commitments were made to people. That is one of the reasons people have lost faith in politicians because when they make a promise, they do not stand over it. We will not agree on a lot of policy or actions but at least if the Government makes a commitment, it should stand over that. I left the Chamber ten minutes ago to talk to a person in Cork City Council's homeless section about getting accommodation for a girl and her child who become homeless on Tuesday night. I know dozens of families, lone parents and individuals who are in homeless accommodation and who are crying out for help. I will give Cork City Council credit. A total of 33% of its allocations went to people in homeless accommodation but still the numbers go up and the homeless figures go up. I ask the Minister to reconsider and to support this Bill. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-10-01/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-10-05T01:01:00+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-10-01