Dessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 20:

In page 49, to delete lines 32 and 33 and substitute the following:“(a) the housing authority concerned shall source dwellings in respect of which they will seek to place people under the housing assistance scheme,”.

I am aware that we have issues over HAP and we have just had arguments on the previous grouping. However, I do not understand why, with the introduction of HAP, we did not go the full hog and give local authorities the ability to source accommodation for tenants or would-be tenants. Over the past while, I have seen people travelling around, some of them with children and some of them pregnant, seeking places to rent. Some of these people are living in cars while they try to source a place. That is the situation.

The gist of most of these amendments is that the local authorities should take a lead role in sourcing accommodation. They should use the resources available to them to do this. They have the computers, skills and means to do it. Many of the people we are talking about do not have these means, but they are being forced to travel all over the city looking for accommodation. I believe local authorities are better placed to source landlords and maintain a list of accommodation that might be available over a period. The local authorities are best placed to build up this intelligence in terms of landlords and properties. People should not be forced to source it themselves.

Local authorities deal with the situation of the homeless in general. Up to recently, we had in the order of 200 people a day in hotels sourced by the local authority, but even officials in the homeless sections of the local authorities are having problems sourcing these places. We can imagine the cost of this. If 200 families require accommodation on a given night at a cost of approximately €80 per room. this means €16,000 a day is being spent on this accommodation. This is a problem. Trying to find this accommodation is a major issue and that is the problem these amendments try to resolve.

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