Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister.

I have a couple of follow-on questions from last week. On the one-stop shop that Mr. Brian Kenny is overseeing, one of the concerns I have on the basis of the information we were given at the previous meeting is there would be, if I understand it correctly, a facility, probably in Dublin city centre, where family presenters could go to be assessed as to whether they have an emergency accommodation need and the attempt at that point would be to provide interventions to keep them in their homes. One of the concerns is that there is still a problem which I raised previously with the Minister of family presenters at local authorities who have been put out from the extended family home due to overcrowding, relationship breakdown and family stress, and those persons, because they are not able to provide any independent documentary evidence of their need for emergency accommodation, such as a notice to quit, are being turned away. I thought, from earlier discussions, that this facility would be an assessment facility to determine genuine cases of persons with a real need for emergency accommodation. It sounds more like a mechanism to return such persons to the family home, where, by and large, when they are presenting as homeless, that relationship has broken down and they need some alternative arrangement. I have some concerns with the way that is presented and I would like the Minister to reflect on that and maybe respond.

At our last meeting I raised the issue of the low number of Housing First tenancies being proposed, which was 300, up from 100, and the official who responded stated that only a small number of the homeless individuals had the level of complex needs that requires Housing First. I would not say it is 300. On the basis of the research that is out there, I would say it is far more than 1,000. The target of 300 is far too small. Housing First works. It is proven to work. There is a need for the Department to be much more ambitious in terms of the numbers based on research from the Housing Agency and elsewhere.

I asked at the previous meeting for the Housing Agency's report on the 50% priority allocation of local authority housing to homeless people. We got it and I thank the Minister for that. I am concerned by the report. It is rare that I would criticise the Housing Agency, but nowhere in the report does it provide evidence to support its conclusions. When one reads the report, it tells one that even though the ministerial directive was introduced in January 2015, the Dublin local authorities were already beginning to increase the amount of allocations to those on the homeless list. These amounted to 5.8% of allocations in 2013. By 2014, they amounted to 15% of them. However, the report refers to a concern about clusters of vulnerable people arising from the 50%, and nowhere is there evidence to suggest that this has happened. In South Dublin County Council that has not happened because of the allocation decisions of the officials. The report states that this is a problem and this is one of the reasons it recommended the ending of the directive, but it does not provide any evidence for that.

The report also talks about creating perverse incentives whereby people think they can get a local authority allocation quicker if they present as homeless, but there is no evidence of this. While it states - it is a kind of assumption - that people may think that, it is not documented in the report.

On the basis of the 2015 figures, 28.6% of all allocations in the Dublin region went to persons who were homeless. By ending the 50% priority allocation, the logic is that this will fall back to the 2014 level, which was 15%, or even back to the 2013 level. This was a really big decision - I presume by the Minister's predecessor - to end the 50% priority allocation. It is politically unpopular. Local councillors will tell one it causes significant difficulties. Given that there is an ever-increasing number of family presenters, the Minister needs to revisit this, either by asking for further research from the Housing Agency to track what happens with the allocations to those in emergency accommodation, or by asking for the evidence, if any, of vulnerable clusters and perverse incentives, because it is merely guesswork if there is no data. The difficulty is that either somebody is a priority case and is prioritised, or he or she is not such a case and is not prioritised. This is one of those areas that needs to be re-examined.

I have two quick questions. The mortgage-to-rent scheme is broken. It simply does not work. The numbers speak for themselves. I would be interested to hear what is the plan other than to review it.

On mortgage distress, there is a significant difference between what is detailed in this section of the plan and what is in the programme for Government in terms of the new model for dealing with mortgage distress. That is not the Minister's primary departmental responsibility, but are we to take it from this document that the Government has shifted from what is in the programme for Government, or are those programme for Government commitments in terms of the broader programme for dealing with mortgage distress, including the independent court and so on, still Government commitments and will they be implemented? If so, does the Minister know when?