Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 1 March 2017

Select Committee on Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government

Estimates for Public Services 2017
Vote 34 - Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government (Revised)

9:30 am

Photo of Simon CoveneySimon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Factoring in the cost of sites is a big problem in Dublin, in particular. It is less of a problem outside Dublin, apart from areas such as Galway and Cork. We are looking independently at the cost of building houses through the Housing Agency and through the Department. In Dublin, depending on what estimate one looks at, one needs to factor in €60,000 for site purchase. This seems crazy to me. If we are talking about private site values of €60,000 to €80,000 per house, using publically owned land to provide affordable houses as well as social housing in mixed tenure developments is a good strategic way of getting value. There is very little black and white here. There is a lot of grey when it comes to housing. We need to get many different approaches working in tandem to increase supply where it is needed.

I know there is frustration that the number of homeless people continues to rise. We have a big focus on families and on getting families out of hotels. This will continue for the next four or five months. I have said that we do not want hotels to be used as emergency accommodation for families after the middle of this year. This is primarily a Dublin issue. We have a plan with chief executives from each of the four Dublin local authorities. We are going to work incredibly hard to try to deliver on that commitment but I think we can do so. We are also delivering for people who are at risk of rough sleeping. We need to deliver more. Most of them are individuals in emergency accommodation. The focus for the first six months or so was to try to get emergency facilities improved and to get sufficient numbers of beds in use in Dublin, in particular, so that people would not have to rough sleep on the streets. I have spoken to rough sleepers, particularly last September when we were trying to assess how many extra beds were needed in the system to ensure that people had the option to go to a safe emergency shelter. That is why we added three new emergency facilities before Christmas and why we are adding another hundred beds at the moment. We are spending millions of euros doing that. However, that is not the solution to homelessness. The solution to homelessness is to find homes for people. Emergency accommodation needs to be a temporary transition, not a permanent or semi-permanent solution for people. Ultimately, that means social housing. It means long-term leasing arrangements, an increased emphasis on rapid builds and a housing first approach towards homelessness.

Last year we saw increases in the numbers of people coming into homelessness, and obviously we need to slow that down. If one looks at the results in this regard, while significant numbers still are in homeless accommodation, 2,700 housing solutions were put in place for homeless people and families last year. That is significantly more than ever before and this year, that figure will be more than 3,000. If one takes the figures for families, on which I have a real focus, the figure for January shows the number of families that are homeless has fallen and the number of children, in particular, in emergency accommodation has also fallen but it is still far too high. The estimate has increased from approximately €70 million last year to just under €100 million this year. I think we spent approximately €40 million on hotel rooms last year. We can get much better results for families by spending that money in a different way. That will be a combination of rapid build, conventional social housing, long-term leasing arrangements for people, homeless HAP and HAP generally, as well as much more suitable tailor-made emergency accommodation for families as a short-term transition measure while we find long-term housing solutions for them. Some people have accused me of promising too much in this area but we should promise in an ambitious way on a short timeline and try to deliver on that, which is what I am trying to do.

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