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

I thank the Deputy for those questions. On homelessness, a lot of the inquiries we are seeing are being driven by individuals and the complexities we have there. We are moving to increase the number of additional emergency accommodation places we have for individuals because it is important to do that. What we saw for two months in a row was a decrease in the overall numbers but for three months before that we were seeing the numbers of families and children in homelessness falling. It could be the case that the numbers for August might be up again. Looking back - and I have looked back over previous years - we have traditionally seen high numbers for homelessness in June, July and August. We did not see them in June this year but we saw them in July and it might have carried through into August. I am engaging with the local authorities to get a better understanding of what has happened over the course of August. The increases we are seeing have been met by increases in exits and in preventions, and that is the important thing. We are doing a huge amount of work and if that work was not being done, a lot more people would find themselves in crisis. For example, if we were not using types of supports such as the housing assistance payment, the homeless housing assistance payment, the place finder programme, paying the deposit and the first month's rent, things would be a lot worse. The same goes for the increase in the social housing stock and that is why it is so important that we are doing that.

I have produced the first quarterly report. What I said previously was that we would continue to publish monthly and we would start reporting quarterly to give that greater level of detail in order that we could understand what was happening with presentations, preventions, exits, length of time in emergency accommodation and to where people are exiting. That is why we know there has been a more than 50% increase in the number of exits into social housing homes rather than into the private sector. That is why we know the majority of people currently in emergency accommodation in Dublin are spending less than 12 months in emergency accommodation.

I have been doing a bit of reading and research into efforts to tackle homelessness in other parts of the world and one of the first things any expert will say is that without good data, it will not be possible to get on top of the underlying causes and then bring about the necessary policy responses. That is why we are continuing to build up our data. We have a separate independent research project under way that is tracking a piece of work on families in emergency accommodation that I hope will help better inform our data and the work we are trying to do. The monthly numbers are important but I have always said we need to get behind the numbers to the people and to the problems and that is how we figure out and tailor better solutions. It is also how we can make sure we get to a point where we believe we have stabilised what is happening in homelessness and to get people out of long-term emergency accommodation. We must make sure that as we build social housing homes, as we increase housing more generally and as we see more landlords returning to the rental sector, it results in a continuing decrease in the numbers of people in emergency accommodation. However, we continue to see people presenting, individual adults in particular. That is a cause of concern but we continue to increase the number of preventions and exits, which is also important.

On rapid-build, "rapid" is an unfortunate word to use The fact of the matter is that it is quick, once planning and procurement have been gone through. We try to shortcut those other processes as much as we can. The fast-track planning process has been done in my Department. There are perceptions around quality, which are unfortunate, but they have largely been dealt with. We have a new framework. Some 150 homes are coming off the new framework on two sites in the next couple of weeks and that provides for 1,200 more homes. What we are seeing with local authorities - and it is part of the engagement I have with the CCMA tomorrow - is that where there are parts of the local authority sector with better expertise on rapid, modular, off-site or prefabricated builds, they are coming to the fore and helping other local authorities that do not have that. It is part of the shared services model we have been building more generally in the housing sector as we upskill the local authorities to build more homes.

On Home Building Finance Ireland, while that is not directly under my Department, the note I have here says there have been 30 applications to date with €41 million of funding approved for 228 homes on seven sites. Some 92% of those are outside of Dublin. The Department of Finance will report on what it is doing at regular intervals but I know from my direct engagements with HBFI what it has been able to do in a number of instances. Having been approached, HBFI, by working on the borrower's application, is enabling that person to then go to the existing banks and get finance that way. That was a point that came up in a recent engagement I had with the Irish Home Builders Association. That was probably about six weeks ago. We had HBFI in the room, as well as Irish Water and others, to go through different challenges the sector was experiencing and we got a good update from the representative from HBFI. A report should be published soon on what it has done to date but those are some of the top-line figures from the Department.

On vacant officer teams, from memory, since Rebuilding Ireland commenced, somewhere in the region of 7,000 to 9,000 homes have come out of long-term vacancy and back into the stock of housing. We have vacant home plans for every local authority and I approved funding for vacancy officers for every local authority. Through that work, I have an individual breakdown of what is happening in each local authority area. What I have been saying to colleagues, to Deputies and to Senators - and I have spoken on this a number of times in the Seanad - is that I have spoken on particular local authorities and given that drill-down of information. I have pointed out what the Central Statistics Office, CSO, said, I have pointed out what the geodata said, I have pointed out what our own surveys said, I have listed the inspections that have happened, I have given the up-to-date numbers and I have detailed the compulsory purchase orders, CPOs, that are in train. That is the level of detail I have given and I can provide that to members on request if they want to do it by way of a parliamentary question, in a Topical Issue matter or in a Commencement matter because it is a good way of getting the information out. There has been a revamp to the website. That will be launched tomorrow by the Minister of State, Deputy English. We have had thousands of people provide information on vacancy in their areas. That goes through Mayo County Council as the lead local authority and then goes through the separate local authority areas from there. It will be announcing some interesting numbers on that tomorrow.