Dr. Niall Muldoon:

On priorities, we can quickly get child support workers into every family home. We can provide significant support in this regard. We have also mentioned the possibility of therapeutic support in that situation. We are talking about adverse childhood experiences and these children will come back to us in ten or 15 years to say they have been traumatised by the State's inability to find them a home. It would be good if we intervened now and provided them and all of their family members, including parents, with therapeutic support. That could be a quick intervention for three or four years, depending on when the Government feels they should will moved out.

We are also considering, whether it is medium-term or short-term, primary legislation changes. They have been highlighted by the Mercy Law Resource Centre and all of my colleagues here. The changes would get the voice of the child into legislation so they have to be adhered to by local authorities. Our children are not part of what they need to follow. As has been said many times previously, legislation creates behaviour and legislation is what local authorities must follow. If legislation does not mention children, they will not be of interest to local authorities and officials who have to make decisions in this regard. We need to change that as quickly as possible but whether that is short or medium-term is up to legislators. From our point of view, the long-term change is the constitutional change so that we acknowledge, as a society, that we will set a floor below which we will not allow any child to fall. We are talking about 4,000 children currently but three years ago there were only 2,000 children. We are not getting away from the problem. As Mr. Allen has said, it will be 2023. That is a significant number of children who need to know that they will get a safe, dignified and peaceful place to spend their childhood.

According to the hierarchy of needs, if one does not have shelter, one cannot provide for oneself and reach one's potential in any other area such as education, health and relationships. I agree with Mr. Allen that we need to challenge the constitutional amendment in some way whether that is through a referendum or the courts. We need to find out what the real parameters are and what society wants. My understanding is that if the correct options are put to the people, they would see the benefit of creating a constitutional right to housing. The UN special rapporteur on housing said that homelessness is an assault on human dignity. We need to accept that this is happening continuously on our watch and there is a need for change. A constitutional change would be a long-term intervention.

We are not experts on housing output but I listen to everything that is said in this regard. There has been a lot of cheerleading about co-location or co-living, student accommodation and different types of rental accommodation. I do not hear an awful lot about family accommodation and where children will grow up. We have heard about where we will move independent, well-financed young people to and different options such as that. However, one-third of rental accommodation is now buy-to-rent accommodation. If they are the right size and space for families to grow up in over the next 25 to 30 years, that is fine, but that has not been part of the core discussion. The discussion is about bodies and not about children and their families, and the growth that they deserve into the future. When we talk about the output of housing, it is about making sure that the families of these children and our future generations have somewhere where they can grow, thrive and survive, which is what the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child offers them.

Dr. McAuley will refer to the framework and the national qualifications or standards.