Ms Niamh Randall:

I thank the Chairman and committee members for the invitation to appear before them. We appreciate being invited and have watched the sessions with great interest. We are aware that the committee has a lot of information, given the number of people who have appeared before it to date. What we will try to do is to focus on the solutions we think are necessary for the people using Simon's services all around the country. We are not trying to repeat any testimony the committee has heard. Our submission is detailed and if there are questions on it, we will be happy to take them.

To explain a little about the Simon Communities of Ireland, it is a national network working all around the country, providing local responses to local needs and issues. It is based in Cork, Dublin, Dundalk, Galway, the midlands, the mid-west, the north west and the south east. It has a very special commitment to working with those who face the most barriers and those who have the most complex support needs. We see the impact of the housing and homelessness crisis in every region and community. It is not only felt in urban areas; it is also felt in rural areas.

We welcome the appointment of a Minister with responsibility for housing, planning and local government. It is critical that the Minister, Deputy Simon Coveney, have the full authority and responsibility to address this crisis. That means having full Cabinet support. It also means having cross-departmental support from the key Departments of Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, Social Protection and Health, as well as the HSE. It means having cross-party support, which is where the committee comes in. We welcome the collaborative approach being taken by all members in working on this issue together.

When thinking about appearing before the committee, I thought about Jim, a man I had met in one of the temporary accommodation services opened in December 2014. He has serious physical and mental health issues. He sleeps at night in a dorm with about 20 other people and by day walks the streets. The staff in the service are brilliant and do their best to care-plan and case-manage, but it is so difficult in such an environment. We seldom hear about people like Jim, whom the State has failed time and again. Of those trapped in emergency accommodation, 2,700 are single people with no dependants.

It is critical that we learn from past mistakes and change expectations. The expectation has to be that people can and will move from homelessness very quickly into a home of their own. Some may need support at some point, but we all do at some stage in our lives. That must be the expectation of people who are homeless and of staff, volunteers and the Government, as stated in the commitments in the homelessness policy statement in 2013. We need to agree that every man, woman and child in the State has a right to a safe, secure and affordable home and that we need to provide it.

We have included much detail in our submission on housing supply across all tenures. I will not go into the details, but I draw the attention of the committee to a call we are making today, that is, that for a limited period 100% of all social housing allocations be made to people who are long-term homeless. We make this call as the numbers in emergency accommodation peaked at more than 6,000 this week, the highest number ever reported. This would apply to all local authority areas where long-term homelessness is an issue and last until the issue was resolved and apply to those who are stuck in homeless services for more than six months, the Government's definition of long-term homelessness. We are talking about people who were in homeless services prior to December 2015.

I will hand over to my colleagues who have a couple of short inputs to make. Mr. Griffin will speak about the right to housing, Mr. Kavanagh on rough sleeping and long-term homelessness and Mr. McGuinness about prevention and families who are homeless.