Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, United Left) | Oireachtas source

The housing crisis will last for many years unless the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government provides some facility to allow Dublin City Council and the local authorities to build houses. They cannot do it at the moment and are mainly dependent on the voluntary sector to build housing - organisations such as the National Association of Building Co-operatives, NABCO, Circle Voluntary Housing Association, and Clúid Housing. Some people are saying that we will start seeing houses being built, yet we have 100,000 people on the housing list. Between November and January last, 6,000 people went on the Dublin City Council housing list.

This should be addressed in the same way the Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest Bill - the so-called FEMPI legislation - was dealt with, on a emergency basis. In the meantime, very vulnerable people are finding themselves homeless. Traveller people and others who are not used to dealing with bureaucracy are being told to go ahead and get private accommodation themselves because they cannot be put into the emergency housing. It has to be resolved and the Department must make it as easy as possible for the NGOs to do that. That should be the focus of our discussion today, as the other issues are too broad to deal with in this meeting.

On the idea of the rent supplement initiative, can the Department give a commitment that it will keep it on the burner so that it is at least taken into account?

The rent supplement threshold must be increased. Between 2013 and 2015, the cost of renting in Dublin increased by almost 40%. As landlords continue to increase rents on a yearly basis, we will be dealing with them in a crisis situation anyway. We need to do deal with that issue now and address other crises as they arise.