Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Ellis spoke earlier about hotels and bed and breakfast accommodation for homeless people and the costs of same. That is an approach that some local authorities take. However, others do not take that approach to homelessness but leave it up to people to find accommodation themselves, to find a couch somewhere or, in some cases, to sleep in a car. They might not say "Sleep in your car," but that is the only option available to some people. I have certainly come across people who have been sleeping in cars. I spoke to a woman who was sleeping in her car who told me that she could see no way out. She was very depressed about it, understandably. She was concerned about where to park in order to be safe, she had nowhere to wash or get fresh clothes and nowhere to charge her phone. That has been the experience of some people; they have not been in a hotel. I do not dispute the very valid point that Deputy Ellis made about the stupidity of the costs associated with accommodating people in hotels, but this is Ireland in 2014.

A number of county managers, from Roscommon, Dun Laoghaire and Limerick, appeared before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Environment, Culture and the Gaeltacht recently. Each of them said that they always had to go above the rent caps to get RAS houses. They would not get such houses otherwise. Roscommon is not the worst case, as it is one of the local authority areas that is under the least pressure, but that was the uniform experience. With the RAS the criterion is 92% of the market rent, but what we are looking at here is hundreds of euro per month below that in most cases.

Often we are asking very vulnerable people to go looking for accommodation. I referred earlier to a woman who had just had a baby - how was she supposed to find accommodation? As I said before, women are not allowed out of hospital with their babies if they do not have a child seat in their car, yet they might have no home to go to. It is extraordinary. Some of the local authorities have actually become homeless agencies, because that is their main function. All day long they are dealing with people who are turning up in crisis.

I ask that a member of the Government or someone in the Department go out and look at a typical unit to let in Dublin city or county or in the counties surrounding it and speak to the people who turn up. Such people are taking the letting agents to one side and begging them to accept rent assistance payments. They are not just asking, but are begging and are promising to top them up. That is the experience, and if the Minister of State rings auctioneers they will tell her that. The houses are simply not available within the current limits. Essentially, we are asking people to go out and find such houses to give the impression that something is being done. Deputy Ellis was absolutely correct when he said that if housing officials were sent out to try to source accommodation, the Minister of State would soon get the true story back in a very direct way. That story is not being transmitted to her at the moment.

This is the number one issue for me and takes up almost all of the time in my constituency office. I can completely relate to what Deputy Boyd Barrett said in that regard. It is a human tragedy. This amendment, at least, seeks to place the obligation to find accommodation on the local authorities rather than on the individuals.

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