Mr. Pat Doyle:

Last year more than 4,700 individuals came through the trust and over 60% of them had a diagnosed mental health problem, were displaying the need for support or had asked for support for a mental health issue. The connection between addiction and mental health is huge and 80% of our client group last year had some form of an addiction. We have a residential detox centre in the Naul, County Dublin, and 84 brave people went through that centre last year. For some of them, their mental health issues came out of their addiction while for others, when they detoxed, their mental health issue worsened. They were medicating their mental health through various substances.

Dealing with institutions and homeless services has an impact on people's mental health. We housed a young man five weeks ago in a unit. I will deal with the funding question in more detail in a minute but our budget last year was €14 million, with €9 million coming from the State and the remainder raised by the trust. One of the things we must do to raise that €5 million is sell our souls on a daily basis. On one such day, I was bringing a group of solicitors around one of our housing units and we met the aforementioned homeless man who had been given the key to his door a number of weeks earlier. One of the solicitors asked him how he felt about having his own house and he said he still could not believe it. He also said, "I don't feel I deserve it". For the majority of homeless people, their self esteem has been damaged and that affects their mental health. Although that man is no longer a client of the trust but is now a tenant, he still does not feel he deserves it. He has seen a lot of his colleagues pass away. We buried 13 of our clients last year and have buried nine so far this year, even though we are not even half way through 2016. Mental health and addiction are serious issues, as is the damage that being in homeless services inflicts on individuals.

As I said already, our budget is €14 million, €5 million of which we must raise ourselves. If any committee members cycle, they are welcome to cycle to Wexford with us on 17 September next. I will be cycling myself and Peter will be firing the starting gun. We do all sorts of things to raise money and the public are very good to us. They are particularly good about donating for capital projects. Most of our donors feel they do not have a responsibility to fund staff; they believe that is the job of the State but they are quite happy to support capital development.

In the past, the planning departments of local authorities were generally bigger than the housing departments. However, a lot of local authorities have had to do major refurbishment work on their housing departments recently because they have now become bigger than the planning departments. Most of the housing offices now have security staff in place, unfortunately. One can identify the housing departments of local authorities quite easily now because there are generally security staff outside, managing stressed individuals.

We have been able to convince a number of landlords in the private sector to hand over their properties to the trust. They do not have a problem with renting out their properties but are worried about mental health and addiction issues. The local authorities have a role to play, not just in terms of increasing their housing and planning staff but also their social work staff. County Laois, for example, only has one or two social workers for the entire county. We should be building up social supports. Part of the resistance of local authorities to building social housing is not about the building process itself but about managing the individuals being housed. We should build up the social work departments in the local authorities.

Voluntary housing associations also have a role to play in linking with private landlords. In a number of cases, landlords have handed over tenancies to the trust. We have become the landlord and as long as they are getting their monthly rent, the property owners are quite happy.