Alan Kelly (Tipperary North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Addressing the current challenges relating to homelessness is a top priority for me and my Department. I will not say there is any silver bullet or that it is easy, but we are trying every combination we can. It is not about funding. It really is about trying to ensure we can put in place all the strategies that will work. I have put in place a special task force to oversee the work of an interdisciplinary unit to source additional accommodation for homeless families.  The task force meets weekly under the guidance of the Minister of State, Deputy Coffey, and myself. My Department is in regular contact with other Departments, State agencies, local authorities and a range of stakeholders from the NGO sector relating to homelessness issues. This issue is dealt with on a daily and weekly basis in my Department and is constantly being monitored. Formal arrangements in place include the joint forum of the cross-Department team on homelessness and the national homelessness consultative committee, which met on 4 June, and the high-level homelessness policy implementation team, which last met on 15 May. This issue is also raised very regularly at meetings of the Cabinet sub-committee on social policy chaired by An Taoiseach. The level of engagement is very high.

The number of families presenting to local authorities as homeless has increased. I accept that rising rents are a major issue and we must address the issue of supply. I have already announced a suite of measures, of which the Deputy is well aware, to increase the supply of social housing. I have also established a suite of measures to help people who are vulnerable to becoming homeless. We are monitoring this constantly. We are also trying to roll out other protocols relating to intercepting people who are vulnerable.

These protocols have worked well in Dublin and have been rolled out in Cork and we are looking at rolling them out. In some cases they are managed by Threshold but it need not always be the one agency. Anyway, those protocols have worked well.

Deputy Murphy raised a query as regards the local authorities and a change in mindset. I would be interested to hear more detail on what Deputy Murphy is offering on the matter. Certainly I can assure her that we are constantly on to the local authorities as regards dealing with this issue, providing extra funding and providing a considerable number of extra staff as well.

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