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

I ask the Senator to allow me to go through the answer. The first issue is that not all people in emergency accommodation have access to a key worker or a support worker or a place finder service, which is the other new service that has been introduced. Some of those services are not provided by the DRHE. Support workers and place finders are provided by the four individual local authorities. South Dublin County Council and Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council have neither service. Although the DRHE has key workers or contracts that out to homeless service NGOs, the number of key workers compared with the rising incidence of homelessness means they cannot get to everybody. It is not uncommon, even for people who are in the Dublin City Council area, not to have access to those workers. However, the fact those things exist supports the need for a more formalised homelessness prevention plan. It would make it more systematic. Likewise with homeless HAP and tenant in situ, there is now a set of supports and, in some areas, workers who can assist, but there is no mechanism to ensure all that is made available at the most appropriate time in a co-ordinated way. Therefore, we still hear stories, not just in my constituency and other parts of Dublin but also outside the county, of people who do not know homeless HAP or tenantin situexist. Nobody is obliged to tell them about those services and that creates difficulties.

As regards the number of eviction notices, one of the problems is that the requirement for landlords to notify the RTB was introduced in two phases.The first phase involved a soft requirement to do so, but if that was not done, it did not invalidate the notice. From the middle of last year, landlords were not only required to notify the RTB, but failure to do so would invalidate the notice. We only have accurate data on eviction notices from the middle of last year. That is a total of five quarters. It is showing a consistent figure of approximately 5,000 per quarter, up or down. We also know, however, there has been an increase in the number of disputes with the RTB. Probably the most important figure is the significant increase in the number of people entering emergency accommodation in that period, although it dipped in some months. On average, between 200 and 300 people entered emergency accommodation. There is no doubt that if we listen anecdotally to what landlords and Threshold are saying and look at our constituency profiles, we see an increasing number of people who are dealing with notices. The majority of those people do not present for emergency accommodation but that has been increasing.

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