Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank all the witnesses for coming to our meeting and for sharing with us their knowledge and experience, which is invaluable. I thank the witnesses, their staff and their volunteers for the work they do every day supporting people who are unfortunate and who become homeless.

The four witnesses have made a great combination of contributions because they bring different perspectives, and they largely confirm a lot of what I believe and understand already.

The point was made by Professor O'Sullivan that the profile of people who are homeless, and those who have become homeless over the past five years, has changed. That is not to say that there are no people who are homeless who have, as described by Ms Leahy, other significant challenges, but there has been a change in the past five or six years that has been driven largely by the lack of supply of affordable housing. People who have been on the social housing waiting list for many years and who have been in private rented accommodation over the past five years have found themselves homeless. I commend Mr. Brendan Kenny and the DRHE on the work they have done in Dublin in reducing the numbers. We are always quick to highlight when the numbers are increasing but these are the lowest numbers in family homelessness, which is great. We need to see it eliminated. It is largely down to Mr. Kenny, but I would like his feedback on the funding that has been provided for the voids refurbishment for the city council to do a call for housing, to acquire housing to prevent tenants from being evicted, and to purchase those houses. I thank him and his staff who have assisted me on a number of occasions and helped to prevent people becoming homeless.

Over the past six to 12 months, there has been an increasing use of private operators to provide emergency homeless accommodation. The numbers of deaths in homelessness make the point starkly. Eight individuals died on the streets in Dublin, but the vast majority of the remainder of the 60 people who died were in some form of provided accommodation. Those numbers say that the people who slept on the street did better and were safer than those who went into the emergency accommodation. I appreciate that there was an emergency response required, but I will give one example of how the emergency response has manifested itself in North Frederick Street in my constituency.

The street is only 100 m or so long but seven privately operated hostels have opened on it in the past six months. They are operated by bouncers and security personnel. When they were open I would not have gone into a pub in Dublin that had a bouncer outside it. I will not do so in the future either because it indicates to me that a pub is not well run. I would not want to sleep in a facility that required security and bouncers on the door. I have a real issue with that. North Frederick Street was lived in by Countess Markievicz, Harry Clarke and Oliver St. John Gogarty. It is an historic street less than 500 m from O'Connell Street. Concentrating all of these people in such accommodation is ghettoising people who are homeless. These are people who had been getting on with their lives. Many of them had been living in rented accommodation. I would like a response from Mr. Kenny on that.

My second question is for Dr. Burns. Dublin City Council, despite all the criticisms I have just made, has clearly made significant strides in reducing family homelessness. That is due to interventions such as homeless HAP increases and investment in voids and other housing. What is needed to achieve the same reductions outside Dublin? While I appreciate the problem is acute in Dublin, there is also a problem outside the capital. I thank all the witnesses for their contributions.