Mr. Mike Allen:

The question on the big ticket item or what would be the one thing is always difficult to answer because in the area of homelessness, in particular, many different things are happening. Using the metaphor of preventing the horse from bolting leads one to look at the issue of prevention. Much of the work we are doing with people involves finding them a home. The people who are not yet homeless already have a home. If we could do more to keep people in the homes they have, it would allow us to focus more of the resources on the other people. We have included a number of things in our submission in that regard.

To elaborate a little further, there is no process either in the private sector or in the local authority sector for when a process of eviction is begun. Nobody needs to be informed.

Even though a person has become homeless the first time that homeless services need to be informed is when he or she is homeless. By that stage it is too late for prevention and dealing with the issues. We have looked at the Scottish system but there are other systems in a number of jurisdictions where informing the authorities is part of the eviction process. This is done not to prevent an eviction but to allow other institutions to intervene in a timely manner and see whether something can be done to remove the underlying cause for the eviction. We strongly argue for such a system and for a much better use of the teams referred to by the Senator that Focus Ireland and Simon have, and maybe others have, who already work with local authorities and can prevent evictions. There are safeguards in place which are not sufficiently used or integrated into the system

With regards a national agency, it is probably not a good thing to include "national" or "social" in a name. Such places tend not to have a good history anywhere in the world.