Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

My understanding is that it is legal because the fire authorities have inspected the building and put in place any measures they feel are necessary at the moment. There are no families there at the moment. Given the window they have, they are working with the local authority to continue completion works.

Deputy Ó Broin also referred to Housing First and the number of tenancies to date. There are just under 100 under the Housing First policy but more will be coming online in August. I have had a great deal to do already, but I have had a chance to look at this policy and to see exactly what it means by meeting with the McVerry Trust. It is a very exciting way to look at things. I know they have been doing even more innovative things in Canada and I am looking forward to looking at that to see what more we can do.

Deputy Ó Broin also raised the issue of the 10,000 houses in the pipeline. This is an issue he has raised before in terms of what and how we are counting. We can come back to how we discuss numbers in more detail if this is a target we want to meet. If a particular site will not be met by local authorities, then they will have to find a new site. In the Deputy's own local authority area, 40% of what is designated is already on-site, which is a welcome development.

On getting Part 8 and moving to construction, Deputy Cowen talked about supply. One of the things I have been speaking about since I took the brief is the need for direct measures to improve supply. Of course, that means ensuring that once we get planning permission, we get on site and get building quickly. We are going to move to put timelines around the four-stage process we have so people can be clear on the timelines at each stage. Where there were previous bottlenecks, for example, with the rapid builds, the previous Minister, Deputy Coveney, to be fair to the very good work he has done, put in place a special framework for procurement so that we could move more quickly.

Deputy Ó Broin also raised the matter of affordable rent and the idea of the council piloting a mixed tenure estate. This is something I am going to look at. Deputy Ó Broin has done some work on this. Affordable rental has to be a big part of the new measures we bring online very quickly because it is a key part in this chain or pyramid, depending on how one likes to analyse the problems we have, in ensuring homes are affordable for people to rent. When we have the supply at affordable rents, we will look at measures to get people greater security of tenure.

Deputy Cowen said the homelessness figure had increased since January with 11 new people presenting each day. Obviously, that is very worrying and difficult for those who present. Social housing output got ahead of target last year from 17,000 to 19,000, as I noted in my opening statement. Good work is being done but this continues to be a challenge. No one is saying this has been solved or that we have finished what we needed to do. We need to continue to do as much work as we have been doing which is why it is good to see the progress that has been made under Housing First. I had the chance to look at St. Agatha's Court, which is where some Housing First people will get new homes. That is very welcome. We also have the new HAP homeless scheme, the flexibility and achievements around which members will be familiar with. That has also been very welcome. I was asked how many modular units and rapid builds had been completed. There will be 68 completed in July with an additional 30 by August, however 500 are advancing. The delay there was procurement but that has been solved. We have that new framework, which is very welcome.

Deputy Cowen also raised the issue of getting families out of hotels. It is not a question of saying the problem will be solved when the families have moved from hotels to hubs. That is not the solution. The hubs are a first response and not the end of what we want to do. What we want to do is find sustainable, secure tenancies for these families.

That is incredibly important. I mentioned this earlier today when I was with Focus Ireland and spoke about some of the issues that I was made aware of by people who were working in early years education. A number of years ago, some of the problems that people were having were around social and language skills with children aged from birth to three years because of problems we had coming out of the recession and the problems in terms of resources and unemployment in families. Some of the problems that are being presented today are in relation to motor skills because of the lack of crawling space for children who are in crowded accommodation or are in hotels and everything else. That is why the hubs are so important but they are only the first response, not the final response in dealing with homeless families.

The issue of Airbnb was raised and I know that officials were here talking about it yesterday. By the third quarter, we will have the report that was intended to be ready by now. The shared economy is fantastic in a nation wherever it arises, be it in relation to issues around motor vehicles, GoCar, car sharing, how we deliver food but also how we live and how some people manage to get a little bit of extra cash each week or month to meet their own accommodation bills. The shared economy, however, also presents new problems when it comes to things such as Airbnb and that is why we will need to reach a memorandum of understanding between the Government and Airbnb around some of these issues.