Mr. John McCarthy:

I will start in reverse order, given the issues raised by Senator Boyhan.

To clarify, we have published a quarter 3 progress report in the same format as in Rebuilding Ireland, which was published on 1 November. That goes through each of the individual actions scheduled for delivery in quarter 3. It mirrors the format in the document and is the format in which we will continue to publish on a quarterly basis. The absence of a presentation earlier was on the understanding that the presentation, to a large measure, was contained in the published report so the purpose of my opening remarks was really just to try to give a summary of some of the key points.

On the issue before Christmas, I wrote to the committee and explained to the Chairman that the period before Christmas was an extraordinarily busy period for everybody concerned, including for committee members because the Houses were sitting for hours, day and night. We were in the throes of trying to finalise a very difficult rental strategy and big legislation, including the legislative amendments associated with the rental strategy. There is never any disrespect intended to the committee by the Department; we never have and, as long as I am Secretary General, we never will. The choice we faced was coming before the committee without some of the key people because they had to service other aspects of the Oireachtas in terms of legislation and Government business. It would not have been the most productive encounter for all of us. That is just by way of background to explain the pressures at the time. There was no intention to show disrespect towards the committee or its members.

In terms of the social housing assessments data, we are very keen to hear any suggestions or comments the committee has received about inconsistency. The appointed date for the social housing assessment 2016 was 21 September. The couple of months between that date and the date it was published were heavily devoted to a data cleansing and validation exercise that was undertaken by the Housing Agency. If there is a suggestion that there are data inconsistencies, it may be because some of the data shown has been cleansed from some of the initial data presented to us. We are happy to engage with the committee. If it has details on that, we will explore them. There is a commitment in the social housing strategy that social housing assessments, which were done every three years up to 2016, will not be undertaken on an annual basis.

In terms of homelessness and data, which Deputy Cowen raised, the figure I referred to of 4,436 was 4,436 adults. There were 2,549 children, so in total we are talking about 6,985, comprising 1,200 families. In terms of the target the Minister has set out clearly in Rebuilding Ireland, that target is to eliminate the use of commercial hotels for emergency accommodation by the middle of the year. In the most recent data available to us, there were about 700 families in commercial hotels in the Dublin region. The target we are working towards is getting that cohort of families living in unsustainable hotel accommodation out of that space by the middle of the year.

The rapid build programme was first spoken about in a demonstration project of different types of modular housing about 15 months ago in September-October 2015. We progressed quickly towards a pilot project in Ballymun. At the time, there were delays with the project partly associated with protests on site. In addition, we ran through some of the worst weather we had experienced over that December into January period. There was also an important amount of learning involved. One of the more significant pieces of learning was the extent to which time was being spent in the housing provider's manufacturing facility and the value associated with that. It meant that any issues arising as part of the construction of the units were dealt with at the earliest possible stage so that when they got on site, some of the issues that can arise when it comes to the actual assembly on site had been taken out. That is one of the significant learnings that came out of that pilot.

The Office of Government Procurement has put a lot of time and effort into putting a general procurement framework in place for rapid build housing. It is now thankfully in place and that will certainly assist local authorities in speeding up the procurement process as they move on with delivery over the course of this year. Apart from the 22 units that have been delivered, there were 131 units in four projects that were under construction in Dublin city at the end of the year. The remaining 200 were at various stages of procurement and will come on stream over the course of the year.

Deputy Cowen made an entirely valid point about my reference to the overall rapid build programme being completed by 2018 and how that gels with the mid-year target we have for hotels. We see the rapid build programme contributing towards meeting the mid-year target but we also see it as an ongoing delivery tool. The commitment to not use hotels other than in exceptional circumstances for emergency accommodation is one we are trying to meet by June but we need to continue to try to ensure we do not fall back into that space. The continued development of rapid build housing will assist over the remainder of 2017 and on into 2018 to help us to keep out of that unsustainable space. We will be organising a session with local authorities in the next ten days to two weeks. We have already had some discussions with local authorities outside the Dublin area in relation to projects that they will bring forward for rapid build purposes so the purpose of the engagement at the end of the month is to, in effect, identify the remaining projects that will contribute to get us to the point of having 1,000 units delivered by the end of this year and the remaining 520 in 2018. That covers the Deputy's points.

Deputy Ó Broin has made the point to the Minister about statistics and other areas of housing provision through Tusla and others. I also hear from what the Deputy is saying that he has difficulty getting that information from other quarters. All I can say is that we have put a lot of time over the past two years into getting the pathways to accommodation support system, PASS, in place to give us good statistics on homelessness so we have a very good handle on what we are dealing with as far as housing authorities are concerned. That has been our focus and the Minister has been clear that that has been our focus. I am not in any way arguing the point with the Deputy about the other areas of activity.

As part of the overall implementation of Rebuilding Ireland, we have a lot of engagement with the other bodies the Deputy has talked about, particularly Tusla, in terms of dealing with homelessness in the round. Responsibility for domestic violence issues was, with the establishment of Tusla, consciously moved away from our Department in the past 18 months to two years. We will continue to engage with it on what information and statistics it can bring to bear so that there is an overall picture of the accommodation being provided through different mechanisms. Generally, one of the things flowing from Rebuilding Ireland is that we are putting a renewed emphasis on the timeliness and the comprehensiveness of our statistics across a range of fronts on homelessness, social housing and broader housing market delivery more generally.

Over recent months, we have established a new unit, headed by a senior statistician, as part of the process of bringing greater clarity. A significant amount must be delivered under the Rebuilding Ireland programme. It is critically important everybody has a clear picture on where the state of delivery is at any time. That is a focus of particular attention for us.

We are certainly not in the business of choosing a particular time to put homelessness statistics out because we feel that, in some way, it will get buried by other news. That is not the business we are in. As I mentioned earlier about December, there were a significant number of other matters going on and the release of the statistics can get delayed from time to time. Again, as part of our statistical work and its presentation on our website, we are interested in transparency and getting the information out there.

The main contributors to exits from homelessness would be the homeless housing assistance payment pilot, which was successful last year in Dublin, and, obviously, mainstream housing allocations. To clarify, I may have given the wrong figure earlier for homelessness exits. I think I gave the figure 2,000 for last year which is actually the figure for the first three quarters of last year. The expectation is that for the year as a whole it will be 2,700.

On the two new emergency accommodation facilities, we engage in an ongoing dialogue with the four Dublin local authorities, in particular Dublin City Council, for which the Dublin Region Homeless Executive, DRHE, acts. We often meet weekly and fortnightly to discuss a range of issues. In all of those meetings, particularly in the early part of the autumn last year, the clear basis of our engagement with the local authorities was that, whatever needed to be put in place for additional emergency accommodation, we would support and fund the first three facilities which were put in place and launched in the second week of December. It brought us to a particular point and gave us sufficient comfort that there would be sufficient emergency accommodation for anybody who needed it. We always saw this as an ongoing process. The two new facilities - I do not know the date - arose in the context of that ongoing dialogue with the DRHE as part of the process of trying to be ahead of the issue rather than finding ourselves in a position of playing catch-up in providing accommodation for people in vulnerable circumstances.

On the length of time in emergency accommodation, as part of our improvement of our statistical work, we will talk to the DRHE to see if there is a way the PASS system can capture those sorts of data. On the allocations of rapid builds, we would certainly aim to be flexible with local authorities. Many competing factors go into the decision as to whether all the rapid build units should or should not be used for families in emergency accommodation. There may be local factors where a more blended approach is required. There are broader issues for each local authority in how they manage the prioritisation and the response to the priorities on their housing lists. If a local authority wants to talk to the Department about a measure of flexibility which it felt was necessary for good local reasons, we would certainly discuss that with it. We would not be in an absolute black and white space on this.