Ms Oonagh Buckley:

It is a big problem and we are working hard on it. We have responded to it by setting up relationships with a number of NGOs and charities. We have reached out and established a memorandum of understanding with the County and City Management Association, CCMA, to provide its services, for example, the housing assistance payment or HAP, to people with permission to remain who need to move into mainstream housing. We have started to write to the residents of various centres, including Mosney, in the past two weeks to tell them about those services and invite them to engage with those services so that we can start to help people move out more actively.

This is a problem that has only arisen in the past year and a half to two years. Prior to that, people who got their right to remain tended to move on quite quickly. The requirement to help people move on has only been an issue for the past 18 months or so.