Ms Mary Hayes:

I am attending today in my capacity as director of the Dublin Region Homeless Executive, the DRHE, which operates a shared service on behalf of the four Dublin local authorities. I am accompanied by Mr. John Durkan, deputy director of the DRHE. The figures of 2023 at a glance are provided and I will focus on the headline figures. There were 1,395 households prevented from homelessness in 2023, which is an increase of 25% when compared with the figures from 2022. This is largely through the addition of the tenant in situ scheme, which supplemented the homeless housing assistance payment, HAP, which had been falling in 2022. These figures for Dublin also include other lettings, such as those to older people who are at risk of homelessness. The committee will be aware of the Dublin scheme in this regard. A number of NGOs, such as Threshold, provide advice and advocacy and they are not included in these figures. These figures are purely prevention through tenancy creations.

For the full year of 2023, there was a 2% decrease in new households presenting as homeless. There was a 6% increase in the numbers who exited to a tenancy but overall, there was still a rise in homelessness given the lower rate of exits to tenancy relative to new presentations. Every month, more are coming in than there are exiting. That is the important figure and that is what is causing the rise.

As for standards and care in emergency accommodation, on which we spoke to the committee before, we started the implementation of a quality standards framework to private emergency accommodation, PEA. There was a growing dependence on this form of accommodation in the Dublin region and concerns were raised at this committee and in other areas on this matter. For the DRHE, the overall strategy is to align standards and service provision between PEA services and NGOs, insofar as is possible.

To date, we have achieved the introduction of a care and case management team, which works on an in-reach basis. It is funded by the DRHE and the HSE. It consists of NGO in-reach teams going into PEAs. This is supplemented by a team of Dublin City Council housing support officers whose sole focus is to promote suitable move-on options. With this in place, residents in both NGO and PEA services can avail of supports focusing on health, addiction, employment, housing needs and so on. However, I do not wish to equate the two; they are not exactly the same yet but that is what we are working towards.

The DRHE has introduced a set of 11 key performance indicators, KPIs, for private emergency accommodation. They are reported on a quarterly basis and cover fire safety, complaints, adverse incidents, training, exclusions and child welfare. The DRHE is working on producing and harmonising the same report between the NGOs and PEAs in order to examine the spectrum of emergency accommodation. There is also a joint project, led by the HSE, which has developed a baseline training programme for all of the staff on PEA projects and covers areas such as trauma and informed care in particular.

As for inspections, the DRHE wishes to move away from relying on self-reporting alone. In addition to the KPI monitoring, there is an appropriately qualified independent inspectorate that examines and reports on building conditions, on-site facilities, operational systems, staff, health and safety and food services. There are also unannounced site visits, including visits during evenings and weekends. That is done by our own team of property and standards staff. This is to find out how it works when the spotlight is not on them and when a visit is not expected. As the committee is probably aware, Dublin Fire Brigade has a rolling schedule of inspections of fire safety across all of the hostels.

As for rough sleeping and Housing First, 147 tenancies were created in the Dublin region in 2023. We are currently operating approximately 520 Housing First tenanacies. There was a rise in the number of rough sleepers in November 2023.

Interagency work continues and we have a strong working relationship across statutory and NGO services in Dublin. There is a HSE private emergency accommodation assertive case management team, PACT, and other groups that are listed in this statement. While I will not list all these groups due to the shortage of time, they are all specialist services that will go into the PEAs that were not there previously. There is also an embedded officer from the Department of Social Protection who works closely with the DRHE and it is a welcome initiative. It helps us move people out of emergency accommodation faster through the prioritisation of move-in grants. It also helps the DRHE support vulnerable individuals and rough sleepers who are experiencing income difficulties following, for example, an institutional discharge or other reason. It is a resource to the sector in terms of training knowledge of rights and entitlements and it is useful to the DRHE when accessing and managing complex cases. Tusla funds a small number of child support work positions that work with families in private emergency accommodation. They have also worked with us through the Department's initiative of supportive housing for youth, SHY, which targets people aged 18 to 24. The homeless action plan for the Dublin region has achieved a lot of work in the last two years and we thank our partners in the NGO services, the four local Dublin authorities, the HSE, the Prison Service, the Probation Service, Tusla and City of Dublin Education and Training Board for all their contributions.