Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Gerry Adams for his comments on homelessness. A few years ago €50 million for homelessness and a further €30 million for facilities for homeless people would have been thought sufficient to deal with the problem. There are issues relating to homelessness that must be addressed by the committee. The city manager will address the committee shortly, as will different agencies.

The programme for the prevention of homelessness has been agreed between the Department of Social Protection, the Dublin Region Homeless Executive, the four Dublin local authorities and Threshold, with the support of the Dublin Simon Community and Focus Ireland. This ensures there will be a speedy response to prevent homelessness, particularly in Dublin, in cases of families with one or more children that are in receipt of rent supplement, as described by Deputy Mathews. Such situations mostly arise when a landlord increases rent beyond the rent supplement limits. The Department staff dealing with this issue will have evidence from Threshold showing temporary rent increases in particular areas and in individual cases. Threshold will make recommendations when it considers that all other avenues have been exhausted for a particular family's housing needs. The Department will consider the recommendations using its discretion under the social welfare code while the local authority and Threshold pursue alternative options on housing. This continues for 13 weeks and may do so for a further 13 weeks.

The suggestions made by the Deputy are worthy of consideration and I will see that they are discussed by the social policy committee. I hope real progress can be made in this area.

See this speech in context