Ms Mary Hayes:

From our perspective, emergency accommodation should always be perceived as a State failure. It is meant to be a very short term response. It is not providing housing for children. Our absolute target would be that while there will always be a space for emergency accommodation, it should not be for any longer than six months. That is the hope and we would still ascribe to that view. In terms of the new legislation, I welcome the protections around landlord sale. They are very important, given the drivers that we see in Dublin. I would have some hope that the extended term for no-fault evictions will stabilise things as well. In terms of what happens on the resetting of rents between tenancies, I am concerned about that, obviously, and we need to think about that, particularly as it relates to HAP. Where we may already be using the full discretion, we need to consider how that is going to work and how we are going to keep pace. It is very early days. We have not have seen how it will work out but they are my early thoughts on it..

In terms of the numbers for last year, 909 new families and 1,857 children came into homelessness in 2024.