Mr. Sam McGuinness:

In the summary of our submission, there is a section on prevention and homeless families. I am going to outline the major areas of homelessness prevention and make some comments on them.

The first issue I wish to highlight is the requirement for a comprehensive plan for the private rented sector. I believe the committee has encountered this issue in the context of a number of other submissions. The next point is the extension of section 10 funding for further prevention work and pushing it out nationally. Another matter is ensuring a statutory obligation for the provision of advice and information and pushing that out. Much work has been done in some of the Dublin areas on that. I wish to comment in a moment on ensuring that national and regional homeless strategies are in put place. Another requirement is to increase the availability of rapid-build housing. I am sure we all have many comments to make on that. The final issue relates to immediate investment in Housing First solutions.

It is very clear that unless we can secure people in their homes, more than 70 families and many other single people will become homeless. There is a great deal of detail in our submission - as well as those of other groups - about how to prevent that. Ensuring that national and regional homeless strategies are in place is of major importance. Unfortunately, one could say that I have been around this sector for too long because we should have solved the problem by now. In February 2013, a housing policy statement was produced. Then there was the Construction 2020 document in May 2014. We had the Social Housing Strategy 2020 in November 2014. We then had then an implementation plan on the State's response to homelessness, also in May 2014. There was the 20-point action plan to address homelessness. Now we have the programme for partnership and the establishment of this committee. Something different has to happen. Too many documents have been written and there has clearly not been enough action. Whatever comes out of this committee, I believe it is a wonderful, disparate group of people that can make a difference. Another important aspect of the process is that in pushing it up to the level of having the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government and the Taoiseach on board, something different has to happen. It a slight on all of us that 6,000 people are homeless and that the figure is increasing.

The other major initiative I wish to comment on is rapid housing. I was informed that what was originally proposed in this regard would happen in time for Christmas. We were told that 22 buildings would be ready and people could move into them. When we met the Minister with responsibility for housing, Deputy Coveney, earlier this month, people had only just begun to move into those homes. That is a long time to wait. They say a lot happens between cup and lip, but that is an extraordinarily long time.

The other day I was just across the road from the Digital Hub. I cannot remember the name of the builder, but Digital Hub gave the tender and they began building 500 student apartments. They started in July 2014 and the apartments will be ready this September. That is not necessarily extraordinary and obviously a commercial builder can do that. The site was ready and the planning permission was there. We need more of that. We need things that can happen. The 500 people involved did not necessarily have to be students. They could have been homeless people. That would have been amazing in terms of what we could do. By the way, there are many other sites around that area. Something could be done to restructure the availability of such sites for in order to address the problems that we are experiencing.

The last thing I will say is about the infrastructural deficit. Dublin Simon alone has provided more accommodation in the past three years than it did the previous 30. There was a need and we could see it. We have provided homes for more than 350 people. We used €6 million of our own money, which we received from legacies, donations,. etc., and we received €8 million under the capital assistance scheme, CAS. That was a huge effort. Without it, I believe that we would be totally distraught in trying to assist all the people we are helping.

We need more effort like that. AHBs, such as our one, need financing. We have just received approval from the Housing Finance Agency but we also need cars and other facilities because, although AHBs are motoring, they have not got to total capacity yet.

Members will know from the testimonies of all the witnesses who have appeared before them that we need to drive local authorities to provide homes in the way they have been known to provide them in the past. Without that being done, I cannot see how these poor people, of whom there will be 10,000 by next Christmas, will survive. We need somehow to engage the private sector, whether it is by engaging its greed, its margins or something else. Unless it makes money, it will not engage with us.