Mr. Pat Dennigan:

We would like to thank the Joint Committee on Children, Disability, Equality, Integration and Youth for the opportunity to discuss the issue of child poverty with it. I am Pat Dennigan, CEO of Focus Ireland, and our delegation includes Mr. Mike Allen, director of advocacy, and Ms Kelly-Ann Byrne, one of our ambassadors with lived experience of homelessness who we have asked to join us as part of our commitment to ensuring that the voices of people who have experienced homelessness are heard where it matters.

Focus Ireland has been working to prevent homelessness and to support people to make sustained exits from homelessness for more than 30 years. Our vision has always been that homelessness can be ended, not just managed. We have long advocated for a commitment to eradicate homelessness and we welcome the goal of working towards ending homelessness by 2030 in the recently published Housing For All policy.

As we have set out in our current organisational strategy, we concentrate our work on single people with complex support needs, young adults, and families. The issue of child poverty is deeply related to people in all three groups. While child poverty is a key part of the cause of homelessness for many single people and young adults, it is also part of the daily experienceof life for children who are homeless with their families. Many children become homeless due to the poverty experienced by their families but the experience of homelessness itself is a deeper and more traumatic form of poverty. We need to understand that the process of their family becoming homeless is in itself traumatic for children and the experience of being homeless is a further trauma.

We welcome the renewed sense of partnership and collaboration between local authorities, Government, State agencies and NGOs that was cemented during the pandemic and the hard-won gains that were achieved but we need this to continue long after restrictions have ended. In recent years, most people entering homelessness have come from the private rented sector and the primary causes of families becoming homeless remain the same, namely landlords leaving the market and rent arrears accruing because supports such as housing assistance payment, HAP, or rent supplement fall far short of real rents.

We would ask this committee to consider several key initiatives that we believe would make a considerable difference to supporting children who are experiencing and those at risk of homelessness. First, funding a sufficient number of child support workers to support children experiencing homelessness should be a key component of Ireland’s plan to deliver the EU child guarantee. The importance of child support workers is demonstrated by our experience with the Focus Ireland family centre and the Dublin family homeless action team. Second, we support former Deputy Jan O’Sullivan’s Private Member's legislation that requires local authorities to put the best interests of children at the centre of their decision making when responding to a homeless family. Finally, we ask that the committee recognises the achievements that have been made possible by partnership between local authorities, NGOs, Departments and other State agencies over the past 18 months and the importance of this approach continuing going forward.

There are a number of other areas of our work which are very relevant to the committee’s work on child poverty. These are outlined in our written submission to the committee and we are happy to take any questions about them. I again thank the Chairman for the opportunity to address the committee.