Mr. John McCarthy:

I suppose everybody would agree that any person or any family finding themselves homeless is not in a good place. We have certainly been pulling out all the stops over a number of years to deal with this issue. In respect of anticipating the issue, budgets were significantly reduced every year since 2008 for reasons we all understand. The housing budget was reduced until 2015, when it was significantly increased. On the one hand, there was a large number of empty units and our budget had historically been very heavily focused on capital build and buy. We reoriented our approach towards meeting housing needs very significantly in response to the economic downturn. In the short to medium term, it allowed us to stretch the available resources through current mechanisms to be able to house more households than if we were putting the money up-front into capital schemes. The reality was that there was an oversupply of accommodation in 2008, 2009 and 2010, much of which was available at a good price both for rent and purchase. We did a very significant reorientation of our housing funding programmes. If we had not done so, the situation would be considerably worse. That is cold comfort for people who find themselves homeless and I do not mean to use it to justify that. I am just providing the context regarding how we changed our approach to meeting housing needs.

Looking at it in its broadest sense, the fundamental issue is a lack of supply in the housing market. This is translating into increases in house prices and rents. The Government has put the Construction 2020 strategy in place for the housing sector to free up more land and bring it into play for housing. Legislation is before the House at the moment that is designed to assist in that process, but Construction 2020 encompasses a range of actions to get housing supply levels back up to a better position. However, until such time as we can restore equilibrium in the wider housing market, we must devote more resources towards dealing with families presenting as homeless and trying to provide short-terms solutions before moving on to longer-term solutions. The roll-out of the social housing strategy, which was published by the Government in the autumn of 2014, is kicking in this year. The significant increase in resources will assist us in that regard. A significant increase in funding is being provided in respect of homelessness, but that involves shorter-term solutions. It is the broader increase in financial resources for housing programmes and social housing programmes more generally that will provide us with the medium to longer-term solutions. We work exceptionally closely with Dublin local authorities practically on a weekly basis, keeping the situation under review, modifying our approaches, introducing new initiatives such as giving priority to homeless households in allocations policy and the provision of additional resources to source accommodation in the rental and acquisitions markets. Even in Dublin, there are still some places where one can acquire property at good value. There are many places in the country where, from a value-for-money perspective, acquisitions would provide one with better capacity and a better return in the short term than building. Nevertheless, a significant building programme has now been announced and is moving on. It had been the focus of considerable attention for a number of years to ensure that we did not get into a difficult situation. We are in the situation we are in right now, but had we not changed our approach five years ago-----