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

These are people who are not in any type of emergency accommodation and that number has fallen, which is welcome. There are a number of people who are facing a very challenging situation and there are, of course, people who are in housing insecurity and who do not know where is the next place they are going to live should they get served a notice to quit. There are also people who have moved back in with their parents because they are struggling to find a place to live.

What I would say to all of them is that the Government is working night and day to further progress Rebuilding Ireland, to get more homes built and to do things like what we have done this morning, which is, effectively, to commence the regulation and limit short-term letting from our major rent pressure zones. What we did last week was to finalise major reforms to the rental sector that are going to introduce rent caps to more areas, extend the timing of rent caps and give people who are in housing insecurity much more time, when the notice to quit is served, to find other accommodation. It is also going to allow the RTB to chase up rogue landlords where they are stepping outside the law or are in breach of the law, and a whole range of other things that will help people in the rental sector, including, for the first time, regulating many larger landlords who, because they brought new properties to the market in the last two years, were not previously covered. For people in emergency accommodation, I continue to engage, week in, week out, with the NGOs and local authorities. We have increased funding for this year for emergency accommodation and we have increased the number of placeholders. We continue to roll out the housing assistance payment.

All of these things are helping people. It is not enough but 329 families left emergency accommodation in the first four months of this year because of work that local authorities are doing, with NGOs and supported by my Department. For the first four months of this year, for every two families that presented into homelessness, one of those families went into emergency accommodation and one went into a home. A huge amount is happening and more will happen as we continue to increase the stock of social housing and continue to put in place those other supports that need to be delivered.

If the Deputy has any additional idea that can help those people, because he is a representative too, he should please bring it forward, look for the support of the House, and he will be able to get it through and we can get to work on it.