Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The money that transferred across to the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government is still less than the budget that was available last year, even when the €20 million that transferred to the housing assistance payment scheme is taken into account. I accept the point that has been made about rent assistance as a poverty trap. I have made that point continually over the years. While I welcome the decision to address it, sufficient staffing resources will not be available at local government level to deal with it in a practical way. We are asking landlords in some areas to take a 30% reduction. That figure is based on the difference between the market rents and what will be available under the housing assistance payment scheme. There are very serious issues in regard to that.

There is no doubt that the Dublin area is the epicentre of this problem. I fully accept that. There are 90,000 individuals or families on the housing list nationally, some 45,000 of whom are in six local authority areas, including Kildare and Cork city. Even though I fully acknowledge that the problem of homelessness is at its most extreme in Dublin, I do not think the solution to it can be confined to that one area. Targets are being set for the next Government, or even the Government after it. This Government does not appear to be setting targets for dealing with homelessness progressively. It is completely unacceptable that a stone's throw from here, we can talk to people who are sleeping on the streets. The extent of this problem and the kinds of conditions in which people are living are being significantly under-estimated. We need to find better ways of capturing the true position of homelessness. It is not good enough for many family members to have to exist in one room, with four or five of them sleeping on the floor and three or four of them sharing a bed.

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