Kathleen Funchion (Carlow-Kilkenny, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for coming in. I am going to have to leave shortly to speak so I apologise in advance for that. I have some brief questions because many of the points have been made and there is no point repeating them.

My first question relates to the targets for year 1 of the strategy. Is it possible to get a county-by-county breakdown? I appreciate the Minister might not have that information to hand, but can we get it forwarded to the committee? Can we get the figures for housing assistance payment tenancies? How many of these are new tenancies? How many are recycled and involve people coming from existing rent supplement schemes? How many are actually coming off the list or coming from homeless or potentially homeless scenarios?

I have some other questions relating to the homeless situation. Many people who are experiencing homelessness have highlighted the immediate measures we could take. An important step is to decide the immediate measures we can take. One possibility is raising rent supplement limits. I do not believe we should do that in isolation - that would be a disaster in terms of rents increasing for everyone. However, it could be linked to rent certainty. What is the Minister's opinion on raising rent supplement along with implementing rent certainty? We need some immediate measures in this area.

I have made a point previously about rural homelessness. It is very different to homelessness in an urban area. For example, in my constituency there is a good mix between urban and rural because it includes Carlow and Kilkenny.

Many people experiencing homelessness in a rural area cannot take up the option of emergency accommodation because it is so far from where their children are at school or if they have part-time work they cannot travel. Has anything been done in the Department to address that specifically because many small villages and towns do not have hotel and bed and breakfast accommodation? For example, in Kilkenny there are three facilities that provide emergency accommodation but someone who is homeless in Urlingford or Callan is a 15 or 20-minute drive away.

The Minister mentioned private property in his statement. We all know of properties in our towns, villages and cities that have been empty for ten, 15 or 20 years. I know property rights are an issue but surely given that there is such a housing crisis we should be considering how to acquire those properties, refurbish and use them. The Minister also spoke about large developments of social housing but there are empty houses all around the country that we could consider taking over. There must be something we can do despite the property rights because not only is it bad for every estate to have empty houses because that leads to anti-social behaviour but it would be better for everyone if someone lived there. That would also help to address the housing and homelessness crisis.