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

I thank the Chairman and Deputy Cowen. I suggest that we ask our questions on a pillar-by-pillar basis. I have questions under each pillar and doing as I suggest might make it easier procedurally, if that is okay.

On pillar 1, I do not want to start on a sour note but we already know most of the information in the presentation. It is information of which we are aware because we have been working through this matter. For future quarterly reports, it would be better to get into the nitty-gritty detail that is not in the public domain straight away because that would save time.

I will address four specific things on homelessness. First, the homeless statistics released every month are not correct. I have raised this matter by means of parliamentary questions on a number of occasions. The statistics in question do not include adults and children in Tusla-funded domestic violence refuge accommodation or step-down accommodation; they do not include foreign nationals in transitional or emergency accommodation funded by the Department of Social Protection's new communities unit; and they do not include the approximately 400 families that are currently trapped in direct provision or those in transitional accommodation funded by the Reception and Integration Agency, RIA, who have their stamp 4 visas. This means that the figures that are being released every month do not reflect the total number of people - adults and children - in emergency accommodation or transitional accommodation. It cannot be very complicated for the relevant Departments to feed all this information in so that when the statistics are released, they will reflect it. I urge the Department to take a lead role to ensure that we have accurate figures on that.

Tusla cannot tell me how many people it has in emergency accommodation when I table parliamentary questions on the matter. The Department of Social Protection will not give me any accurate figures. The Department of Justice and Equality has provided the figures for direct provision. If we are releasing a report saying that this is the number of homeless individuals and families and children, it should - irrespective of who they are funded by - include information on all of them.

I am concerned at the way in which those figures have been released two months in a row. I raised concerns when the October report was published because it was put up on the Department's website at 6 p.m. on a Friday, with no accompanying statement. The statement went up early the following week and it appears as if there was an attempt to bury bad news. The figures for November were released on 30 December when everybody was away on holidays. We had been chasing these figures for two or three weeks and we had thought that they would come out at the end of the second week or the beginning of the third week in December. Regardless of whether it is the case - and I am aware that the Department is extremely busy - it seems that those figures, which have been bade news for two months in a row, have not been given the same kind of media attention that the Minister is providing in respect of a lot of other positive news. He is very proactive in the media and many stories emerged over the Christmas period. The Minister published opinion pieces, press releases, etc., which is great. However, I am of the view that the figures should be released in a different way and I wanted to raise that.

On rapid-build housing units, there is no point in telling us how many of these are in the pipeline. We want to know how many are on-site and under construction at present. Another issue arises in the context of the use of such units. Some of us are currently working Part 8 planning applications in our local authorities. It is still not clear whether the Department is going to require the local authorities to tenant all of those rapid-build units with families coming directly from emergency accommodation. We do not know whether they be in there for a period of six months while they are being moved on to other permanent accommodation, whether these units will be their permanent homes or whether local authorities will be given a certain amount of flexibility, through the use of transfers, to ensure a much more integrated allocations policy. I would be interested to hear responses in respect of that matter.

"Exits" is a wonderful word because it does not exactly tell us what we are looking for. It is a somewhat similar to what happens when the phrase "social housing solutions" is used. What we would like to know is how many of these exits relate to households as opposed to individuals. Both figures in this regard would be useful. What do the people exit into? Can our guests confirm that they are all permanent long-term tenancies and that none of them are short-term supported tenancies of any kind?

The other really important thing that must be considered in the context of the figures - both in terms of the homeless figures monthly and the exits - is the average length of time that households are spending in emergency accommodation. The latter is a really important metric for us. I know it is difficult to produce. I imagine, however, that it would be possible - even by region - to say that the households currently in emergency accommodation have been there, on average, for a certain period and also to indicate the length of time for which those who have been the subject exits have been in such accommodation.

Lastly, there has been some controversy between Apollo House, Home Sweet Home and the Minister over the two new facilities in Dublin. I welcome that funding is being made available for those two facilities. I am merely interested because Dublin City Council councillors from all parties knew nothing about this until it was in the media. They first heard about it from the press. Obviously, there were conversations between the Minister and the housing managers in advance of his meeting with Home Sweet Home but I would be interested to know the timeline because none of us knew about these either. Did Dublin City Council approach the Department or the Department approach the council? When did that take place and when was funding agreed? I understand there are sensitivities about new homeless facilities because unfortunately, some politicians - none in this room but in local authorities - often play politics with it. Is it proper procedure that councillors and Deputies learn of these significant developments from the press rather than through the institutional meetings of committees, here or in the local authority?