Mr. Mike Allen:

My two points about the process and engagement with the Department were, one, it was after the Department paused that process, which had introduced this new approach, that Focus Ireland services around the country and all the other organisations we speak to reported that it appeared that every local authority is behaving as if the law was changed to do this. It is a fight-by-fight, case-by-case issue, which is having to be taken up and takes up an enormous amount of advocacy and legal time. That is important.

The second point is that one of the major challenges we made to the proposals is the same as the one we just discussed here. There was an assumption this was a huge problem and that lots of people in the homeless system had no right to housing. We asked where the evidence for this was and various things were put forward. Then the Department asked the Dublin Regiona Homeless Executive to look at Pathway Accommodation and Support System, PASS, on a particular night and say how many people on that system do not have a right to housing. They came up with this figure of more than 40% for that particular night. That was presented in various forums as proof there was a large number of people but, of course, Dublin Region Homeless Executive, Focus Ireland and anybody know knows the PASS knows that is not the case. That was simply a measure of the number of people in the homeless system who, on that night, had not had their material filled out or been added to PASS, which is another issue. The context of this, and somewhere a lot more energy could go into, is it leads to a six-week to a couple of months delay for a person who goes in looking for a housing assessment to get that assessment done by local authorities right across the country. In many cases, the local authority refuses to provide that household with emergency accommodations until it has gotten round to the process of doing the housing application. That is a very serious day-to-day programme. It means the homeless figures are lower than the reality and huge numbers of people, who are often vulnerable or with children, are put in very risky situations or staying in situations that are unstable. That is what we should spend time trying to solve.