Mr. Mike Allen:

Mr. Ó Siochrú's research covered many areas of the country because it dealt with all the services that are providing prevention services and being funded by Bord Gáis. The research carried out by Dr. Walsh and Mr. Harvey is focused on Dublin only because it essentially studied the family action team, which is funded by the four local authorities in Dublin. In general, when carrying out research, we try to look outside Dublin. An increasing proportion of homelessness is in Dublin but we need to be clear about what is happening elsewhere. We also have a greater capacity in Dublin to understand what is happening from where we are sitting because of the range of services we run. There tends to be a slightly greater level of fragmentation outside Dublin and Focus Ireland is not necessarily in a position to do the research. It is not right that the largest research budget in homelessness is being provided by a voluntary sector organisation and funded by individual donations and corporate support. The State should allocate a percentage of the money it is spending on homelessness for the type of research work Focus Ireland and others are doing. It is in a much better position to do this work and it should then publish the findings because many of the reports carried out by the State are not published.

Focus Ireland does not operate in all counties, specifically in the west and midlands where we work with partners. Our services are different in different counties, depending on history, our relationships with the relevant local authority and so forth.

We meed the Minister reasonably regularly and we will meet the new principal officer on housing, Mr. David Kelly, later this morning when he visits Focus Ireland's offices. These meetings are constructive in broad terms, although we have a fundamental disagreement with the Department. Nevertheless, we also recognise the progress being made and work being done.

A question was asked about what will happen in the next three years. Housing is being delivered in the private sector, through new social housing units and, I understand, through an increase in rented accommodation.

The demand for housing is growing faster than the supply. That means the problem is going to get worse, which inevitably will squeeze some people out and into homelessness. There is a lack of acknowledgment of those facts both in terms of the aspirations or targets to deliver housing and planning to deal with the scale of the problem we will continue to face for the next three years. This is the first time in my experience of working in homelessness where the Government is not saying it intends to end homelessness and outlining a timescale. There has been a lot of sneering at the attempts to do that before but we achieved an enormous amount in the run up to 2010, with which Deputy Ó Broin and others will be familiar. The fact that we failed does not mean we should give up on our aspiration to end homelessness. It would be much easier, more motivating and meaningful for everybody involved if we identified a period where we acknowledge that the situation will get worse, when we genuinely expect it to turn a corner and what we will do then. Our fear is that as soon as that corner is turned public attention will move away from these issues and these families and single people will be left in hubs or in emergency accommodation. Our fear is that we will get used to this high level of homelessness and it will become normalised. To avoid that situation we need the sort of plan that the Oireachtas laid out. We would say that the work that was done by the last committee, or the committee that existed in the period before this Government was formed, set out an agenda. For example, Sláintecare is constantly referred to, although people will argue about the extent to which the policy has framed the response to the health issue, and is acknowledged as the framework. Unfortunately, that has not been the case with housing and homelessness. The targets that were set have not been adopted and we are still using the targets from before. We could list many things that the Government needs to do. We do not need to make up a new list because the committee has already done a lot of that work and the Government should revert back to that report as a framework in terms of its ambition.