FCC pledges to tackle family homelessness

Fingal County Council has called on the government to enact a dormant piece of legislation that would tackle the issue of family homelessness. 

With Labour’s Brian McDonagh holding the position of Mayor on Fingal County Council as part of Labour’s deal with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to run the council, the party is using the mayoral role to put pressure on the government.

In 2017, then-Labour TD and former Minister for Housing Jan O’Sullivan published the Homeless Families Bill, which the party says would “give due regard to the rights of the child and protect families vulnerable to facing eviction and homelessness.”

When the bill was introduced in July 2017, there were 1365 homeless families in Ireland, with then-Taoiseach Leo Varadkar declaring shortly afterwards that the homeless crisis was a “national emergency.”

The most recent round of figures, for February 2025, recorded 2,185 homeless families nationwide, with 1,520 of that figure being in Dublin.

Speaking on Prime Time in March 2024, former Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien said that homeless figures were the “first thing” on his mind when he wakes up in the morning.

The most recent set of homeless figures at the point in time was 13,531.

12 months later, that same figure was 15,378.

Speaking at this week’s meeting of Fingal County Council under Mayor’s Business, McDonagh said, “I don’t need to tell any councillors or anybody within the council the difficulties that homeless figures pose.”

“We’re in a situation where it’s become such a long-term problem. I remember the issue being raised when Labour were finishing up in government (in 2016) and I don’t think we ever would have imagined this issue would have continued through such an era of prosperity,” the Howth-Malahide councillor said.

McDonagh said there was “some” movement on the bill being enacted during the last Dáil, but said there were no indications that the current government would be interested in moving the issue forward.

The bill made it through the second stage of the legislative process, unopposed, but McDonagh implied that the current government were not going to push it forward.

Fellow Howth-Malahide councillor Joan Hopkins said that homelessness is “the issue that keeps me up at night.”

“When people are ringing you – families, mothers, the stress they’re under – they have nowhere to go. We all have homes and can go to bed and forget about this, but families being homeless is totally unacceptable.”

Prior to politics, Hopkins worked for Focus Point on Eustace Street in the 1990s.

She noted that at that stage, there were 500-600 homeless people in Dublin, mostly men.

In that job, Hopkins recalled receiving a book from Sister Stanislaus Kennedy about how to end homelessness – “that book was in the 90s, and it’s as relevant today as it was then. The problem is so bad now.”

The Social Democrats councillor noted that there are over 100,000 vacant homes nationwide, yet in the last decade, only eight social homes have been built in Howth.

“We’re failing – I will do anything to support an initiative to support the people who are homeless in this country today.”

Sinn Féin councillor Malachy Quinn said, “this is a calamity and a disgrace. It’s a blight on our society.”

“We have break-ups of families due to homelessness because of the stress they’re under; the father and the mother find themselves also homeless and they’re trying to find somewhere where they have access to their children so they can help their mental health and their children’s mental health,” the Balbriggan councillor noted.

Quinn’s Sinn Féin colleague, Swords councillor John Smyth, said, “this is failure by design. We had a housing bubble in this country before, that burst, and it left my generation and generations after me spread to the four corners of the world. It’s by design, and it was on purpose.”

“We are purposefully limiting supply, and that is driving demand up time and time again.”

“I feel for my family and for the generation that is coming after me,” Smyth said.

Independent Swords councillor Darren Jack Kelly said, “we’re just not building enough houses; that’s what it comes down to.”

Kelly called on the Mayor to work with his counterparts across the different local authorities in Dublin to create a consensus on the issue and to create a Dublin-wide approach to the issue.

National Party councillor Patrick Quinlan was quick to link the issue to immigration.

“While this council is right to note the rise in family homelessness, any serious conversation about tackling the crisis must begin with an honest assessment of the root causes. The crisis is being in large part by record immigration levels.”

Quinlan noted a report from estate agents that Dublin properties are selling above asking average price and that central government figures were “deflecting” on the issue.

Quinlan’s remarks were called” dishonest and disingenuous” to link the homeless crisis to immigration by independent councillor Jimmy Guerin.

“If you care about homelessness, you don’t care about creed, colour or location. We have a duty as elected representatives to work with local authorities to provide housing. That’s what we’re put here for.”

“When you have elected representatives talking about immigration as being the problem – it’s not,” the Howth-Malahide councillor said.

“Don’t always call on the government – do it yourself.”

Swords councillor Dean Mulligan questioned Quinlan’s sources, noting that Quinlan’s report came from extra.ie, which he says was “bias.”

“There is some illusion that the housing market is one-dimensional, as if this hasn’t been economic policy for decades.”

The Independents4Change councillor said that “white Irish people make up the highest immigration population across the world, per capita. As someone who was only recently in the United States, we make up a large proportion of immigrants across the world,” he noted.

“These are human beings with the same blood in their veins as me and you. If I went to the hospital and needed a blood transfusion in the morning, it doesn’t matter what country in the world I’m in, I’m getting human blood from a human person.”

McDonagh reiterated Guerin’s points, “if you care about homeless people, it’s people that you care about. All the rest of it is hate-filled rhetoric which looks to build a horrible society that goes back to the 1930s and 1940s.”