Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I want to address two issues. First, the removal of 875 people from the official homelessness statistics and, second, issues related to the housing assistance payment. At the end of April, when the official homelessness statistics for the month of March were produced 875 people had been removed from the housing waiting lists. According to the Department, they had been "reclassified". Others used different language such as fiddling the figures, cooking the books and doctoring the statistics. They understood that 10,000 people officially on the homeless list was politically sensitive and they sensed that the figures were kept below that number by any means necessary. The Minister quickly went to bat and denied that was the case. In making his defence, he made great play of the fact that two reports had been commissioned and he said that when those two reports were brought before the housing committee and society the true position would become clear. We now have those two reports and, to be honest, they do not leave anyone any the wiser as to the reason 875 people have been taken off the homeless list.

When the Minister was challenged about this today he said that there is a third report and it will clarify the situation but he has not told us when that report will be produced. Will it be produced before the Dáil adjourns for the summer recess in mid-July? Will the Minister be out-the-gap at that point such that we will not have to discuss these issues until September? No information has been presented in terms of timescale.

Eight weeks on from these reclassifications the silence in terms of a detailed forensic breakdown as to why in the opinion of the Minister and the Department each of those reclassifications was justified is damning. The lack of evidence is damning. People will draw their own conclusions. There has not been total silence, however. The assistant CEO of Dublin City Council, Mr. Brendan Kenny, said on "Morning Ireland" on 31 May that Dublin City Council had carried out a reclassification of more than 200 people and that these were people not living in emergency accommodation. Reference was made to 65 families who were in private rented apartments. Under questioning, Mr. Kenny stated that the more than 200 people concerned were not covered by any lease, were not in accommodation which was in a legal sense secure or permanent and that all or the vast bulk of them were being covered under section 10 funding, which as we know is funding for accommodation for homeless persons. The evidence about the fiddling of the figures continues to stack up while the evidence we were promised to dismantle that argument has not been presented.

On the housing assistance payment, HAP, under the rent supplement scheme a person in receipt of rent supplement remained on the housing waiting list, which is the fundamental difference between the rent supplement scheme and HAP. There are other differences as well. It is understandable why a woman who heads a family that has been ten or 12 years on the housing waiting list would be hesitant about moving from emergency accommodation to HAP accommodation.

That person may have had the experience of going into emergency accommodation from the private rental sector in the first place. In fact, the statistics from the DRHE report show it is the main reason people enter emergency accommodation. If the Minister wants to end the situation whereby families in emergency accommodation are wary of offers of HAP accommodation, I can give him a simple solution. Let them accept the HAP offer and stay on the housing list at the same time, which is the South Dublin County Council solution. The Minister will not do that because the whole point of HAP for him and the Government is twofold, that is, to artificially reduce housing waiting lists and privatise social housing provision.

The statistics in the DRHE report on the reasons people go into emergency accommodation are very powerful. Family circumstance is a major reason, but it is not the only reason. People come from the private rented sector for reasons such as properties being sold, repairs, renovations and so on. If we want to stem the rise of homelessness and people being forced into emergency accommodation, is a simple solution not to bring in legislation to ban economic evictions?