Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

If Tusla can push the boat out in terms of its own responsibility to develop a policy in that area, I would appreciate it. It is vital that we have that pressure, which is also coming from other sources, to get people, in particular families and the 3,740 children listed as homeless in the most recent figures, moved on as quickly as possible.

I move to Ms Hurley. As Deputy Rabbitte and Ms Hurley said, the statutory responsibility rests with local authorities and the root cause is shortage of housing supply. Local authorities need to be funded to supply social housing. I am not talking about HAP and so on; I am talking about the revenue side of it. The crucial side of this is the delivery of social housing through local authorities, voluntary housing associations and the voids scheme. Perhaps Ms Hurley can discuss voids. Fewer council houses were returned through the voids scheme in the past year. I am sure other public representatives also see vacant local authority houses in their areas which have been empty for long periods. I ask for a direct answer on that. It is a way to provide homes quickly to people on social housing lists. Ms Hurley provided the committee with a figure for the amounts spent this year. There was an Exchequer allocation of €146 million for homeless services. What about the use of the budget for construction? We are getting stories from local authorities that they are waiting for approval to move to the construction phases of council apartments and houses. That seems to be stuck. Is there an issue with releasing funding for local authorities to do their job, namely provide housing?

I refer to Traveller budgets. Consistently, those budgets have been underspent by some local authorities in particular. Hearings are taking place in the Seanad Chamber today on Traveller issues. I have been a member of the cross-party group and am aware that the spending of the allocations for Traveller accommodation is an issue that arises all the time. From my own experience, a lot of the larger families stuck in emergency accommodation, hotels and hubs are Traveller families. Some Traveller families are still quite large and I know Traveller families that have been in hotels for quite some time. I ask Ms Hurley to provide me with some answers on all of that.