Deputy Michael Kitt:

I welcome the delegations to this meeting. The Limerick delegation stated there was adequate land zoned for the building of houses. If we are to have a successful strategy, we need to have a mix of acquiring and building housing. Voluntary housing associations will often acquire parochial, diocesan or trust lands. Applications have gone in for the CAS, the capital assistance scheme, and decisions will be made on them soon. There might, however be an issue about acquiring land. Are the rural local authorities going that route?

How many cases of youth homelessness, particularly in Dublin, are there? Ghost estates are a big issue with rural local authorities.

There are many houses but they are in the wrong areas. I represent a rural part of Galway, which has houses but they are not in the right places, and this is also happening in Dublin with regard to families in hotels. They are also in the wrong place and should not be there. As Mr. Doyle mentioned, there is an issue of other Departments being involved with regard to education, employment and the health services. In Galway city, the Simon Community and the HSE try to organise dental, podiatry and chiropody services for people who are homeless. I fully support voluntary organisations being on a high-level group. There are two high-level groups and there is much analysis but not enough action. We would all agree on this. Mr. Doyle also mentioned establishing a special Oireachtas task force to examine the issue of homelessness. I suggest the committee could support this because it is a serious situation and the committee could feed into the policy, and the right policy would be deliverable. We could tackle the homeless issue through such a task force. I hope the committee will examine this.

Mr. Doyle also mentioned a dedicated unit in the Department and I fully support this. Will there be dedicated units in local authorities as there is with regard to tenant purchases or housing grants for disabled persons? Sometimes when one speaks to a local authority about mortgage-to-rent scheme cases, not much information is available and there is no dedicated unit for those who face eviction. We do not want to see evictions continuing if we can come up with a solution which would be acceptable to local authorities and the banks with regard to the various forms one must complete before one is even considered for the mortgage-to-rent scheme.