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

I thank the witnesses for their presentations. I want to acknowledge the significant volume of work being done by our guests and by their teams in all of the organisations. While it is those people who are at risk of or experiencing homelessness who have the most difficult job, the staff of our guests, particularly front-line staff in the local government and NGO sectors, have to work with those people and take a lot of that significant stress home. It is important that the committee acknowledges that and thanks our guests.

Mr. Stanley mentioned that since the Simon Communities of Ireland were last here, homelessness has increased by 38%. For those of us who have been here a little bit longer than when we published our last housing report, we did a homeless report in the previous Dáil and the figures are almost double that in a short period. The concern I have is that every time we come to talk about this, things are worse, despite the fact that we have huge amounts of good work ongoing across the board. I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news but the Residential Tenancies Board has just published the latest eviction notice figures for the quarter of this year and they are the highest in the last three quarters, with 4,753 eviction notices.

My first question is on that new information. Ms Hayes rightly said there is a consistent level of presentations and effectively what is a collapse in preventions and exits into the private rental sector. Clearly the information we have received today will make that much more difficult in the time ahead.

Can Ms Hayes give us a sense of how close to capacity the Dublin Region Homeless Executive is with regard to bed spaces? What does she think the impact of the latest wave of eviction notices will be?

With respect to the Simon Communities of Ireland, these questions might be for Mr. Stanley's service providers. I notice in the Irish Examinertoday that the Cork Simon Community is saying it has never been as bad. Can people give us a sense of how close we are to capacity in different areas? How concerned are they that the increasing level of eviction notices and lack of private sector supply will mean that the coming months will be more difficult than what we have seen to date?