Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This is a very important part of Rebuilding Ireland, and I want to acknowledge the Chairman's excellent work in this regard. The premise is that people who are homeless have a need for a house and often have a need for other wrap-around services. The Chairman espoused the housing first principle in the programme for Government talks. Until relatively recently a view would have been taken in many parts of administrative Ireland that a house would be provided after all of the other social needs, whereas the evidence now suggests that providing people with a stable housing situation and wrapping around the services is often the way to break the difficult cycle of addiction, abuse or various other health needs. I gave a commitment to significantly increase the funding and that is what we are doing. I recently visited the Capuchin Day Centre and saw the work done by Brother Kevin Crowley. I was in a facility for homeless women and children in Mullingar, called Temporary Emergency Accommodation Midlands, TEAM, last Monday week. The message that we need to take from that is that the job of tackling homelessness and the issues of homeless people is not just something that rests with the Minister for Housing, Community and Local Government, Deputy Coveney. There are societal issues that interact here that we have to try to provide for.

I thank the Chairman for his work. I hope the funding we have provided will make a significant difference. Some of the metrics are outlined in the performance information note from my Department which was circulated to the committee. We want to get to 100% of substance misusers over the age of 18, for whom treatment has commenced, within one calendar month following assessment. Currently, it is 97%. We want to get to 100% of substance misusers under 18 years of age, for whom treatment has commenced, within one week. That figure is 81.4% now so it is quite a jump to get to 100% of people under the age of 18 this year. The percentage of service users admitted to homeless emergency accommodation hostels or facilities whose health needs have been assessed within two weeks of admission is currently 73.9%. We have funded that to get it to 85% this year. We can make a real and significant difference. We can also do other things that seem very logical.

When I was in TEAM in Mullingar last Monday week, I spoke to some women and their children who find themselves living there. They cannot speak highly enough of the facility they are living in but their medical card is attached to a specific GP and that GP may be many miles away. To use the example of somebody I was talking to from Portlaoise who is now living in this temporary accommodation in Mullingar, if she needs to bring her child to the doctor, she has to get the bus to Portlaoise and back. It is a huge burden. Prescription charges and how they are dealt with is another issue. Can we give a medical card to a centre and waive the prescription charges? I have given a very clear commitment to try to look at the prescription charge issue and the medical card issue. Can these temporary accommodation facilities have a medical card attached to the centre which can be used by those living in the centre? By virtue of it being a transient group of people, those people will change. I will be happy to come back and update the committee on those points. They are two small, practical things on the health side that we could do to ease the hassle and inconvenience for some of these people.