Mr. Mike Allen:

I thank the Deputy for that question. We addressed in our statement that there has been a considerable improvement in the conditions in which families are living, particularly in Dublin but in the rest of the country as well, over the period of the pandemic. As the numbers of families who are homeless have fallen, the local authorities and Dublin Regional Homeless Executive have taken the opportunity to improve the quality of accommodation and there are far fewer families living in commercial hotels than there were before. That is not to say it is not an appalling circumstance that people are living in poverty and being affected by it, but the improvement is worth noting, partly because it is important to hang on to it. As the measures which resulted in the decline in family homelessness, particularly those to prevent evictions, are lifted, we see the numbers creeping up again. That will inevitably put pressure on services which are exactly the ones the Deputy referred to.

While there are a sufficient number of emergency places available, families coming into the system just need to go through an ordinary process. They are coming into a system which is already overcrowded with not enough places and so on and there are all sorts of administrative measures, delays and people being moved across town. All our services have talked about the traumatic effect of that. Some of the families experiencing homelessness are coming out of poverty and of existing challenges for the children, but some of the families are becoming homeless because their landlord is selling. They have never had any economic problems or problems like this before. Our services from the beginning of the crisis have remarked that families who came in with no social problems and no impact on the children were, over a short period in homeless services, beginning to exhibit all sorts of problems more normally associated with families who had already had traumatic experiences. It is not a criticism of the local authorities but of the legislation when we say in the submission that the legislation and regulation of homeless services is written on the assumption that people becoming homeless are single men and the response is related to that assumption. None of the things we have done in terms of changing the Constitution, putting children at the centre of it and so on have carried into homeless legislation.

That legislation should be reformed in order that local authorities and public servants delivering public services are clearly informed that they must put the rights and the interests of the child first in any dealings. Unfortunately, there are so many other things going on that in the context of the sorts of circumstances the Deputy described the rights and interests of the child have not been the top priority.