Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I already gave the Deputy the statistics on the number of beds that are available for emergency purposes. There are an extra 80 beds available since 1 November. I told the Deputy how many people have moved on into permanent accommodation and I told him that at the weekend I announced the provision of €100 million for the construction of social housing next year.

With regard to the rent supplement, my colleague, the Minister for Social Protection, improved the rent caps in the Dublin area earlier this year. We have a commitment in the programme for Government which we will implement next year, to transfer to a payment called HAP, housing assistance payment, which will get us away from rent supplement, except when used in the short term. All long-term rent supplement people will transfer to a system of payment whereby they will pay the same as if they were a local authority tenant. We are making progress on this and will start the transition in 2014.

I have provided the Deputy with statistics on what we are doing. We are also working closely with the voluntary sector and they are helping us provide accommodation. They particularly support the housing-led approach, which is the ultimate solution. If people continue to stay in emergency accommodation when they are ready and should move on into long-term accommodation, there are no beds available for the real emergencies that arise daily. We have a programme and an implementation plan and we are supporting people to move into homes. This is a housing-led approach, which has been shown to be the right way to go.

I am committed to reaching the goal of ending long-term homelessness by 2016. We will not do this by continuing to do things as we have always done them. This is why we are changing the way we are doing things. An oversight group will report to me in the next week with specific proposals regarding what we need to change to achieve this goal. One of the things we need to do is to move people out of emergency accommodation into homes and to provide the supports they need to deal with their addiction problems or whatever problems they have. Then, when there are emergencies, there will be spaces available in the emergency hostels.

We are working on a variety of solutions to this issue. None of us wants to see anybody sleeping rough or out in the cold weather. I pay tribute to the Dublin Region Homeless Executive which is taking strong action on this issue. It is successful in what it is doing, but there is more to do. The provision of housing is an area in which we want to see an increase now that the economy has started to turn around. We have already started on work to increase the supply of social housing.

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