Mr. Mike Allen:

I thank the committee for inviting us to make this presentation. There are large areas of huge public concern where we have very detailed knowledge from our own experience of exactly what is happening on the ground. This particular problem is not one of them. Our knowledge of Airbnb is secondary. We welcome the opportunity to address the committee. We assume the committee is asking us, as it tries to grapple with this issue, to put it in context. That is where we think we may be able to contribute. We are not able to bring any of our own statistics or figures on it. The research, which I hope is useful, is secondary research we have done on the issue. I do not think the committee needs me to spend time telling it how many individuals and families are homeless. It is the context in which we are working. What Focus Ireland can bring to it is our own research. Every quarter we do a detailed survey of every family that became homeless in a particular month. We phone them up and ask them about not only the immediate cause of their homelessness but their trajectory into homelessness. If we ask families why they became homeless, we end up with a very large number of people who say it was because of family breakdown. If we ask them what happened before that, we find that a very large number were living in the private rented sector. Things went wrong and they went to live with wider family for a period of time and when that broke down they ended up in homeless services. To really understand what is happening, we have to see that these families previously lived in the private rented sector rather than looking at the last place they lived in. Overwhelmingly the families that are in emergency accommodation had their last secure home in the private rented sector.

A small proportion are new family formations but they are the primary ones. Over time we have moved to a situation where the families who became homeless from the private rented sector were saying that rising rents were the cause to saying that it is landlords ceasing to be landlords that is the primary cause.