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

The Minister of State made a very fair case throughout the past few hours about amendments that we have tabled that were, in his view, too prescriptive and argued that there was a better way of doing things. In many cases, his arguments were strong. We may agree or disagree with them but they were strong and credible arguments. I say my next sentence with the greatest respect. I do not believe for one second that the Minister of State believes the script he just read out is an appropriate response to the concern that is being raised. I know that he is going to stick to the script, and that is fine, but I would really urge him, between now and Report Stage, to talk to officials and, as Deputy O'Callaghan suggested, to some of the homeless service providers about this matter.

Think about it for one second. A family that is economically homeless could spend two years in emergency accommodation. That emergency accommodation could change three or four times because of the nature of our system. The family will start off in a hotel and then move to a hub. They might then try to move to a hub that is closer to where the children are in school and then eventually they might get private rental accommodation. That is a very typical experience because of the way the emergency accommodation system for families is set up. Single homeless people who may have other complex issues going on in their lives could be in an out of a cycle of emergency accommodation including sofa surfing, rough sleeping and so on. Therefore, the complexity of their addresses is very difficult. That is why, for example, particularly in city centre homeless accommodation, we do not require those people to change their social welfare collection point every time they change hostel because it is recognised that there is a level of moving.

All I am asking the Minister of State to do is to think really hard about this one. What Deputies O'Callaghan, Gould and I are saying is that this is a barrier that is unnecessary. I know we have to make sure that the electoral register is clean and modernised but for such a small, albeit growing, cohort of people we can do better than this. I would also say that the Minister of State should not cod himself that our local authorities in those areas with high and rising levels of homelessness have anything close to the resources needed to even deal with the emergency accommodation, HAP and housing needs assessment applications. In most of the large local authorities, a housing needs assessment application when somebody becomes homeless is taking 16 weeks. That is just to get people on the list. HAP applications, if people manage to find HAP accommodation, are taking 12 to 14 weeks in the big local authorities. In that context, I would imagine that if city or county managers or directors of housing were listening in and heard that their staff will be expected to annually register the 3,500 homeless single people and the homeless households, that there is an additional administrative burden, they would say that it is not going to work.

In the spirit in which he has engaged with us this evening, I ask the Minister of State to think long and hard about this. A simple Government amendment on Report Stage could fix what is a significant problem for a small number of people without having any adverse impact on the integrity of the register or the process.