Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank our guests for their presentations. I think this is Ms Hayes's first full appearance before our committee. She will find we are very friendly. I wish her the very best in what is a very demanding job, as I am sure she knows much better than the rest of us.

I had the pleasure of visiting Waterford and seeing the centralised hub. It is a really good model, so I commend the good work of Ms Breathnach and her team.

My questions are for Ms Timmons. We know from her presentation and from the figures last month that, while there was a slight dip between December 2020 to December 2021, the general trend is upwards. Part of what seems to be driving that trend is a significant increase in the past six months in the number of landlords issuing vacant possession notices to quit and more family presentations. At the same time, there are fewer rental properties because of those sales. The main worry I have is that the Department issued a circular last week that prevents, among other things, local authorities from purchasing properties that have housing assistance payment, HAP, or rental accommodation scheme, RAS, tenants in them despite the fact they could then face a notice to quit and be at risk of homelessness. I fully understand why the Department does not want local authorities to be in open competition with private purchasers for vacant properties with for-sale signs, but it makes no sense at a time of rising family homelessness to remove the ability of a local authority to prevent a family from becoming homeless by purchasing that property if a HAP or RAS tenant is in situand the other criteria are met. Is that something the Department will reconsider, particularly given the likelihood that the number of family homelessness presentations will increase?

Many of us were surprised when we saw the new Housing First targets. The target of 50 additional tenancies a year is far too low. I suspect that if the Department had a private conversation with NGOs or homelessness service providers in the regions, they would say that if the targets had been based on need, they would have been closer to 400 or 500. What metric was used to determine that figure of an additional 50 and how will the Department determine how they are allocated?

My next question follows on from one that Deputy Andrews asked. Local authorities are not refusing people on habitual residency condition, HRC, grounds at the moment, but in part that is because they have the cold weather initiative, which will end in April. All the local authorities, as I understand it, are waiting to know what the outcome of deliberations between the Department of Justice and the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage will be for guidance on what happens. In cases where a local authority is availing of the cold weather initiative and there are people in a property, rightly but not habitually resident, perhaps if they are Irish people from the area of a different local authority or people from outside of the State, what will be the guidance from the Department to the local authorities? April is fast approaching and there are quite a number of those HRC cases.

My final question relates to inspections. Did the Department actively consider HIQA as the independent inspection body? I am sure Ms Hayes and her team would love not to have to worry about carrying out inspections. They developed a really good-quality standards framework. Would it not be better for an already-existing independent body to carry out inspections of both the public and private sectors? I appreciate HIQA at a board level discussed how there would need to be a change of legislation and some additional resourcing, but would it not make more sense? The service providers could then get on with providing services, with an independent inspection regime.