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

Before I go into this question, would be possible for one of the Minister's officials to draft a short briefing note for the committee on a very technical aspect of the affordable housing fund legislation? I refer to the long backstop and what I call the 40-year rule, which is one of the conditions under which the local authorities can seek the full repayment of the equity. I am not going to ask the Minister to talk us through it now, but there is a little bit of ambiguity and concern around how that may be applied. We would like somebody to drop the committee a note.

I have questions on the funding of homeless services. They do not relate the Peter McVerry Trust. Although there is a little bit of context, they are specifically to do with other issues. Obviously, homeless services have for some time been funded through what many of us call the deficit model. Therefore, up to 90% of the funding is provided by the Exchequer and then own fundraising is brought to fill in the gap. The information in the public domain, and it is only reporting, has suggested that one of the problems in the Peter McVerry Trust is an overreliance on deficit funding, which in some cases is somewhere in the region of just 70% of Exchequer funding and then they start dipping into capital funding to cover current expenditure. Obviously, we will have to wait until we see the independent reports. We will question the trust, Department officials and others at that stage. What I want to raise is correspondence the Minister has been receiving since 2020 from the four principal homeless service providers, namely, Dublin Simon Community, Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, Focus Ireland and Crosscare. As he knows, they wrote to him in October 2020 highlighting a series of concerns around the section 10 funding model and seeking a review of that funding. He wrote back to them and then they wrote to him again on 23 December 202. In their letter to the Minister, they stated:

It is crucial to understand that homeless services are and have been operating at funding deficits for some substantial time [This is the current expenditure deficits]. Organisations like ourselves have been subventing the provision of partially funded services operating at deficits from both fundraised income and our own resources. This is clearly an unsustainable position. We understand how the review of homeless services could address these issues and we are committed to engage with you in this regard.

They then made a detailed submission to the Minister's Department in November 2021, and there was further correspondence in 2022. I understand some of the Minister's officials and those from the organisations met consistently over a period of approximately two years. However, it is my understanding that review, particularly the review of section 10 funding and deficit funding, did not commence prior to the public revelations around the Peter McVerry Trust. Obviously, a review has been initiated since then. It is highly likely that if that review had been initiated when the four homeless service providers requested it, that is, if it had happened in 2021 and 2022, the very serious issues at Peter McVerry Trust would have come to light. That is just a summation.

Can the Minister explain why that review did not take place relatively soon after the homeless service providers requested it? As I said, they requested it at the end of 2020. Some of the language in their letters is quite alarming. Obviously, these organisations are bringing that concern to his direct attention in correspondence to him to try to have the matter resolved. Can he give us an indication of where the review of section 10 funding, which I understand is happening, is at? It seems remarkable that when the four largest organisations in the country were calling for a review that was dealing with one of the very problems that caused difficulty in Peter McVerry Trust, that review was not in fact conducted, certainly not within a two-year period from the initial request.