Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and I appreciate his opening remarks. I will stick to questions on the figures. We had a debate yesterday evening on housing and we will have many other opportunities to debate the issues. My first question relates to the reporting of homelessness data. The Minister should forget about whether we agree with the baseline figures. Is he committed to monthly reporting of this data? There were reports that the Department, and not him necessarily, wanted to change to quarterly reporting. I am concerned about that and I would like to give him the opportunity to tell the committee that he is committed to monthly reporting, which is a fundamental issue. I wrote to him in this regard on 30 April.

I acknowledge the Minister said the reporting of homelessness figures is being examined but I hope the alleged overstatement of the figures by between 600 and 800 over a series of months will be clarified. We have had no clarity and we are all left to dispute them. The public are disputing them and my worry is this is a diversion from the core issue. Whether it is more than 10,000 people or fewer than 10,000, it is the people themselves who matter. The discussion has moved on to whether we can trust the figures. That needs to be cleared up quickly. If inaccuracies are found, will the Department commit to publishing the verified figures to confirm the numbers removed from the list in March? Will that format be applied retrospectively to previous months? We need a baseline that we agree and that we can work from. We cannot deal with a problem if we do not know how big it is. Housing is a quantifiable issue. Homelessness, supply, affordability and resources are quantifiable. The Minister's predecessor was at pains to tell us, as he has since, that money is no object in respect of the Government's response, which is good. What caused the purported mistake in categorisation? How have the numbers been recategorised? How have the 600 to 800 units been categorised?

The national homelessness consultative committee was set up in April 2007 as a forum for dialogue between the Department and non-governmental organisations, NGOs, on policies to address homelessness.

That is crucial and it has been up and running since 2007. That group met once in 2017 and, as far as I am aware, not once in 2018. It also met once in 2016. We could really use it much better and I have spent much time in the past number of weeks meeting representatives of NGOs and bodies within that. It is useful and we need to speak with the people on the ground. I know the Minister is doing that but I get a sense from time to time that there seems to be an over-centralisation of control within the Customs House and the Department. We need to reach out and the committee was set up to be useful. I have heard from people involved with it and they might be able to get to the bottom of the discrepancies in the numbers.

In the short couple of minutes left on this topic I will ask about delivery. I will not go through the figures again. The Minister indicated 8,000 will be built this year but that remains to be seen. A big part of the Rebuilding Ireland plan was the housing delivery office. It is something we debated with last night's motion and the Minister alluded to an agency in his opening statement and also the establishment of an affordable housing scheme. Perhaps the discussion last night was of some use. Is the office fully effective and how many staff does it have? My understanding is there were three but are there more or fewer now? If this is to be a main driver in housing delivery, what is the optimum level? Where does the Minister see the unit going?

I promised to stay within the five minutes and I am timing myself. Is the stage four process relating to procurement and construction really necessary? It is a period of 59 weeks so can we not do something there? It is within our control when we build on our land. I have stated again and again on behalf of my party that we are happy to see the utilisation of public land and ownership for public and affordable housing. It is paramount. We have the inventory and we know where is the land. We can get on and build on it. My final questions relate to a couple of examples in this regard. They include Oscar Traynor Road, O'Devaney Gardens and the Glass Bottle site. These are three flagship projects in Dublin that can show people that something is happening. We need them to show shovels in the ground. The figures do not mean much to people if they cannot see activity on the ground. Will the Minister provide an update on when those projects are expected to commence? Are we waiting for the establishment of the proposed Government affordable housing scheme before we can commence?