Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

This is important and I am glad the Deputy has raised the serious issue of homelessness and what we can do to support those people who need our help. At an acute level, particularly in Housing First, wraparound supports are needed. This month we will be announcing details of over 1,200 new tenancies, which is more than we have promised in Housing for All for long-term homeless individuals. It does this by providing a permanent home as well as providing supports for physical health, mental health and addiction issues, or all three. I will be launching that this month and we are expanding that across the country. We have new posts in place for the regional delivery of Housing First. Homelessness is an area we will continue to focus on, particularly in the provision of one-bedroom properties and conversions. While we have done a lot of work on voids this year, a lot of them are complex as the properties have been empty for significant lengths of time. They are not just what some would call re-lets but we have done deep work on voids. We will bring back more than 3,000 such units into use this year and I have asked the local authorities to focus them on the homeless sector. We are seeing an increase in homelessness in recent months and I have flagged that with the committee and with Cabinet. That will continue in the coming months and we will have to watch that. We are putting in place our national homelessness oversight committee that I will chair. It will bring the Departments together as well as the NGOs that are part of my task force. We need a real focus on delivery in this area. It will help to provide an increase in housing and social housing output next year. We must use our vacant stock in a much better way and reduce the number of vacancies we have. I will be focusing on that area and we have had support across the committee on this.

Any additional expenditure we had this year went towards continuing the winter plan for homelessness the whole way through and towards the real progress that has been made on rough sleepers. We have had a significant reduction of over 35% of rough sleepers year on year. Interestingly in the recent rough sleepers count we can see that there are still too many but only 11 people in Dublin were on the street sleeping rough compared with how it was this time last year. We are seeing a lot of people moving out of that rough sleeper category. There is more than enough emergency accommodation for everyone who needs it. I know there are other reasons people will suffer but people need to know that safe and secure emergency accommodation is available for them. If we look at October 2021 we had 94 people sleeping rough, which was down 31 from the spring and down 45 from last winter. That is a significant reduction. We had 316 new beds in place and 198 of them are permanent so that is an area I will focus on.

The national building control regulator and national standards got approval at Cabinet as part of our response to mica, defective block and other issues. We need to have this in place and it will require a separate memo to Cabinet by way of the draft general scheme. It will also require prelegislative scrutiny and I will have the committee involved in that. It is important and we have to show people where the State is making an extraordinary intervention to help homeowners, and rightly so. We have to ensure these things do not happen again. There will be a review of what has happened, undertaken by a senior counsel, and that is also in measures I brought forward on defective block and mica. I will be seeking the co-operation and input of the committee into moving forward with that legislation. It is in preparation and at an early stage. To be honest a Bill will not be published during this side of the year but it is a priority Bill and I will be seeking the Deputy’s assistance on it.

The maximum permissible carryover capital was 10%. There will be no surrender and we are reallocating our moneys into areas I have mentioned, such as supporting local government. We are working on some other things that we have not gotten full approval for yet. We are focusing a lot of that on local government and on housing areas such as voids, buy-to-lets and the likes of regenerated properties that have been stuck for a long time. I am taking them out of that category and Deputy McAuliffe has been strong on the issue of properties in Dublin that have been empty for a long time and getting them back and re-tenanted. Detailed work is needed on those properties. We are looking at a capital spend of about €3.7 billion next year. We will have more than enough. I should not say that in case the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Michael McGrath, is listening. We will have sufficient funds to deliver an extensive housing programme and to deliver more homes at a social housing level than has ever been seen before in any given year. We will get permission for that carryover into next year but it will be used.