Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank Dr. O'Carroll for attending and for presenting his report at short notice, which we really appreciate. When the committee was formed back in September or October of last year, we set out work themes we wanted to address and one of them was homelessness, particularly the issue of deaths in homeless services. I was not aware of Dr. O'Carroll’s work and I regret that we did not have the opportunity to invite him in at that time. His report would not have been prepared then, however, so perhaps the timing is good. We did have some very good witnesses in Eoin O'Sullivan, Alice Leahy, the DRHE and Novas. We produced a report based on the submissions made by those witnesses, the questions we were able to ask them and some observations from members. We plan to launch the report shortly. We would have launched it much sooner except that we have been very restricted in our work.

I know we had technical difficulties with Dr. O'Carroll's slide presentation but I would be very much of a mind, subject to the agreement of Dr. O'Carroll and the committee, to include some of the findings from his report in our report on homelessness. It could be in the format of the slide presentation which we might be able to present with it. We hope to do a public launch of the report. With the agreement of the committee, it would be great if Dr. O'Carroll was available to attend the launch. I know he has a busy work schedule and I do not want to push our luck by trying to get him in twice at short notice, but the report he presented is assisting us in looking deep down into the issues that exist in homelessness and deaths in homelessness. That would be great.

I normally chair the committee. I thank Deputy McAuliffe for stepping in at short notice. I was at the convention centre putting questions on the referendum on the right to housing, which is a transformative matter. There was a good and positive response on that. The housing commission will examine the matter with some urgency.

I cannot remember which of the witnesses made a suggestion in the original presentation that the double welfare payment had contributed in some way to overdoses and, possibly, deaths. Would any of the figures Dr. O'Carroll has looked at correlate with that?