Mr. Mike Allen:

The additional groups to be consulted are not a major part of what we are saying, but we agree with what people are saying, in particular with regard to the groups affected by the housing. Our main point is that everybody working on homelessness, including all of the groups here, knows that while the legislation defining access to emergency accommodation is distinct and in a separate clause from social housing, every local authority on every day of the year renders people shelterless on the basis that they do not have a housing right or have not even had time to do it. The Department first went to the national homeless action committee and said it wanted to deprive a whole group of people of shelter and to discuss that. It got a huge negative reaction. It then said it would put that to one side and came forward with this Bill, which everybody knows would in practice have the same effect. That is not a good basis for building the trust and collaboration we need to build to end homelessness, which should be our joint endeavour. Arguing that they are separate pieces of legislation is completely misleading in terms of the reality a person faces. One thing this really draws into clarity is that if you as individual were to lose your home and go to your local authority and it for some reason says it does not consider you to be homeless, there is no appeals process in the administrative system. You have to go to the law centres, Focus Ireland, Threshold or wherever. That in itself is wrong. Why not scrap this piece of legislation and introduce legislation that would create an appeals system within the housing and local authority system? That would be a real step forward in terms of social justice and ending homelessness.