Ms Rebecca Keatinge:

I thank members for their questions. With respect to the right of housing, we have published a trilogy of reports on the right to housing and have consistently advocated for a constitutional protection on the right to housing. I concur with the points made by colleagues in respect of why it would make a meaningful difference in this time of housing crisis. Mercy Law Resource Centre views it from a future-proofing approach as well. We are trying to safeguard against a recurrence of this crisis in the future. We believe such an amendment would provide a long-standing floor of protection for homeless individuals, families facing housing difficulties and influence on a much broader scale by way of policy-making and law-making in respect of housing. I agree with the comments about policy measures and legislation being brought forward, which have essentially been blocked on the basis of a constitutional barrier.

We see a need for a rebalancing of the constitutional provisions that prevent this from being a repeated block on measures coming in to address meaningfully the serious crisis we face. We have heard a great deal today about Rebuilding Ireland. Those commitments were made in 2017. We are here two years later with the same issues and the same statistics. The figures are going up. We need to look at bigger-picture measures that will address meaningfully the crisis we are facing. I acknowledge that the constitutional amendment is not a silver bullet. It has to be accompanied by political will and meaningful resources to change policy properly. Our second report, which was a comparative analysis looking at other jurisdictions, may be of interest to the committee. It established that the protection of this right is common in well-functioning democracies. Everybody has a different model. There is no one-size-fits-all model. This model exists elsewhere and has had a meaningful impact.

I am going backwards. I am taking Mr. Allen's approach as well. While the national standards framework is welcome, in our experience there is a low level of awareness of these standards, and of the complaints mechanism, among homeless people and families. We frequently engage with families that are having issues with their emergency accommodation which might not yet be legal issues. They might not have their hands on the substantial standards document. They might not be engaged with key workers. The reality is that key workers are generally allocated to those in the most stable forms of emergency accommodation. At the early stages, families in one-night-only arrangements or in self-accommodation do not necessarily have a key worker who can direct them to the standards and the complaints mechanism. We agree that a statutory independent inspection regime is needed. We do not have a formal position on the appropriate body to undertake that role.

I have to say categorically in response to the question about whether the level of output of real social housing is enough that the current level is completely inadequate. That is why the statistics are continuing to increase and why we are all here today to discuss the issue of child and family homelessness. The HAP scheme, which is the default option presented by housing authorities to our clients, is part of the social housing framework. The legislation has been amended to make HAP the new form of social housing support. It is clearly unsuitable for many families and inaccessible to many families. We deal with ethnic minorities with large family sizes. When they are unable to source tenancies in the private rental market, the housing authorities assume they are not looking hard enough despite clear evidence to the contrary. The HAP scheme is not the solution to this crisis. The solution is to build more housing, including public and social housing.

We have a number of clients who move into the approved housing body sector, where the standard is excellent. It seems that the vast majority of social housing is coming from that sector. It is important to note there is less security of tenure in an approved housing body dwelling than in a social housing dwelling. That should be noted because the approved housing bodies come under the residential tenancies legislation. We work with clients whose tenancies have been lawfully terminated in the first six months after being transferred from social housing to approved housing bodies. A client may have had a secure tenancy for 25 years, or 40 years as was the case in one instance, only to have it terminated in the first week after it came under the new legislation. That is a deficiency in the legislation. It is quite a niche area, but it can cause huge suffering. That would be a concern arising from our case work.

I was asked whether we have two or three priority recommendations. I will mention three priorities for us. First, we are calling for section 10 to be examined as a matter of urgency to facilitate a shift from a discretionary power to provide emergency accommodation to a duty to make such provision. We believe that in the absence of such a duty, there is considerable confusion and obfuscation, which is leading to improper refusals of emergency accommodation.

Second, we are calling for the cessation of one-night-only arrangements. I would like to make a distinction between such arrangements and self-accommodation, which arises when a family can book its own hotel. If one is on a one-night-only arrangement, one is not permitted to make such a booking. Instead, one is placed somewhere for a single night. Self-accommodation families are sometimes unable to find bookings so they revert to the one-night-only system. Such families are vulnerable because they are in the most precarious, distressing and chaotic circumstances. They are not in a position to articulate the nature of their plight because they are too busy packing their bags, getting on the bus and trying to figure out how to feed their children and get them to the doctor. We would really like some attention to be paid to that issue.

Third, we are calling for regulations to impose a limit on the amount of time a family can spend in inappropriate accommodation and to oblige housing authorities to assess the suitability of emergency accommodation. We need to stop putting families in hotels. There should be a statutory obligation on housing authorities to assess whether hotel accommodation is appropriate for a family. That does not happen at the moment. There is a blanket use of hotel accommodation. We see very little assessment of actual needs. We believe such regulations would go some way towards putting an obligation of this nature in place and bringing vulnerability assessments into the legal framework.