Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Emergency accommodation is not a permanent solution to anybody's homelessness difficulties. What the Government did before Christmas, to much praise from some of the organisations to which the Deputy has referred, was initiate an emergency response over a number of areas. While that seems to have passed Deputy Ó Cuív by, it has been widely written about as being very successful. However, it is not a long-term solution. The long-term solution to homelessness and housing difficulties is to build more houses. Unfortunately, when Fianna Fáil was in government, it crashed the building industry. We are now slowly rebuilding it to get homes for families and homes for people. Already this year, we have devoted in the budget for 2015 and over the next three years the largest amount ever devoted to a house building programme in the history of the State. The Deputy will know that local authorities all over the country have received significant allocations to build social houses as well as builders in the private sector developing and building affordable houses. While that obviously has passed Fianna Fáil by, it is actually the way to solve the housing crisis.

What we are doing on rent supplement, which the Deputy will remember from his time as a Minister, is providing that when people go back to work, they go off rent supplement. We have now got unemployment down to just 10%. When we came into office, we inherited an unemployment rate of nearly 15% from Fianna Fáil in government. The numbers of people on rent supplement is going down for two reasons: the numbers of people going back to work, which is a great credit to them and a great development and recovery for the country, and because we have developed the housing assistance payment. We are slowly but surely moving very large numbers of people and the budget that goes with that to the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government where the rent supplement of old will be handled by local authorities. The value of that will be that, as with a council house rental, the adult family members involved will not be inhibited from going out to work. We want everybody in the country to be able to get back to work. Thankfully, we are now putting builders back to work. The construction workers whose jobs Fianna Fáil destroyed will build the homes that families need.

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