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

Regarding the inter-agency group, and not to personalise it, but the chair, John Murphy, is the former Secretary General of the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation and led the Action Plan for Jobs. He also has previous experience in the housing side of the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government so he is more than qualified to help get a better co-ordination of the various services. Many supports are spent on trying to help people in homelessness, and rightly so. This year, my Department will provide - I will give the committee a proper detail of this, but this is off the top of my head - around €100 million in homelessness services. Between local authorities separately and the HSE there will be about another €50 million to perhaps €65 million. A little less than half of that, maybe 40%, goes through the voluntary sector in terms of service delivery. One of the things I have heard back from the voluntary sector is that they will hear of a commitment for funding from somewhere else regarding a facility or services that will be run in a homelessness facility, the money does not materialise and then they find themselves chasing it down. This is to make sure that the money that is committed is being spent appropriately in the right place. That is a piece of work that Mr. Murphy will do. He has already commenced that work. We have met and a series of meetings is coming up very shortly. I will get an accurate breakdown to the committee following today's meeting.

As for people falling between two stools and not being able to qualify for a mortgage or for social housing, we have affordable buy schemes on the way in certain sites such as O'Devaney Gardens. It was intended that there would be a mix of affordable buy and affordable rent there but more than likely, in terms of the numbers adding up, it is probably going to be more affordable buy. I am conscious that people are locked out of the mortgage market. I am conscious that these people would be able to finance or repay a mortgage if they could get better financing terms and, again, without wanting to fly any kites or be accused of doing so, we will have measures to announce later on in a couple of weeks.

Senator Coffey mentioned the rent pressure zones. They are working, and the data for Dublin show us that if the trend for this year continues, rent inflation will be about 3% in Dublin. Last year it was 8.5%. When one is paying a high rent of €1,500, as most people in Dublin are, that kind of change does make a difference. It is good that we saw two new areas, Drogheda and Greystones, qualify. Given that we have that criterion in law now, we will more than likely see over each of the coming quarters more areas fall into those zones, although ideally we would not because the rents would not be increasing.