Rebecca Moynihan (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will try to be quick and ask questions as opposed to making statements. I thank the participants for coming today and, in particular, I pay tribute to Brendan Kenny. I have worked with Mr. Kenny on Dublin City Council for the last ten years. He is one of the great examples of a pure public servant. He has a very can-do attitude and if anyone has a problem, they go to Mr. Kenny. That is my experience of dealing with him.

Professor O'Sullivan talked about the decreasing level of homelessness in other parts of the country. What would he attribute that to when compared with the situation in Dublin? One of the things Councillor Anthony Flynn has talked about is that we do not have the numbers for homeless deaths in the country. For example, we know the figure has increased in Dublin but we do not have a fair representation in Limerick, Cork or Galway. Perhaps Professor O'Sullivan could give us his experience of that for this year.

On a question to Mr. Kenny, one of the issues that came up in the research conducted by BeLonG To on the LGBTQ+ experience of homelessness was the gendered nature of hostels and how some people, particularly trans and non-binary people, did not want to go into hostels because they did not feel safe. Have any steps been taken to address that or to collect data on that issue? Has any work been done by Dublin City Council and what is the Dublin Region Homeless Executive's perspective on that?

I have a question for Ms Leahy and Novas on the vaccine roll-out programme. Have they had any indication from the Department of where both their service users and staff are on the list for the vaccine programme? Do they have concerns about where they are on that list? Mr. Kenny mentioned the DRHE is employing a company to inspect all private hostel places. How many places are operating in a private capacity? When does Mr. Kenny expect those inspections to be up and running and what are the terms of reference for that?