Dan Neville (Limerick, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate. I wish to deal with a specific area, which is homelessness and people with serious mental health issues. Our mental health is as important as our physical health and it is essential for Ireland's economic and social recovery. Whether personally or through family, friends or colleagues, everyone is likely to be affected by mental health difficulties at some point in their lives. The next Government must ensure people with mental health difficulties can be assessed for and have access to appropriate social housing with tenancy sustainment services in order to support their recovery.

Between October 2012 and September 2013, every nine and a half days someone was discharged into homelessness from the Tallaght mental health service. According to the Housing Agency, nationally 1,034 people with a mental health disability were on the housing lists nationally in 2013. Those are the latest figures I could obtain. Having a home is essential to maintaining one's mental health. People using the mental health services should have access to appropriate social housing, if required, to support their recovery. It is unfair and wrong that people, having been treated, are being discharged from mental health services into homelessness. We must ensure there is an adequate supply of social housing places for people with a mental health disability in order to prevent homelessness and unnecessary long stays in hospital. This may require allocating a number of new social housing units to people with a mental health disability.

We must fund sustainable support for people with a mental health difficulty so that they can maintain their tenure, which will prevent homelessness. We must ensure that rent supplement and the housing assistance payment is provided at a level that reflects the real cost of rental accommodation so that people with a mental health disability can have security of tenure. We know the difficulties people with a mental illness already have in obtaining housing under a tenancy due to the stigma surrounding mental health, although this is a debate for another day. The combination of official rent contribution increases and tight rent limits means that individuals in competitive rental markets such as Dublin are increasingly at the risk of homelessness. For those with a mental health disability living in rented accommodation, the insecurity of tenure can lead to a deterioration in their mental health as can homelessness itself.

There is a higher prevalence of mental health illness among homeless people than there is in the general population. They are also more likely to be alcoholics and suffer from drug dependency. Some 20% to 25% of homeless people, compared to 6% of non-homeless people, have a severe mental illness. Others estimate that up to one third of homeless people suffer from mental illness.

Studies have found that there is a correlation between homelessness and incarceration in prison. Those with a mental health illness or substance abuse problems are found to be incarcerated at a higher frequency than the general population. Yesterday, I attended and was involved in the launch of a project to look at the level of mental illness in our prison population and young people. A high proportion of our prison population has a mental health challenge. Some 65% of people in prison have a mental health challenge and a further 35% have an intellectual disability. It is unclear how many people within the prison population have both a mental health challenge and an intellectual disability. This is an area that is rarely debated in relation to homelessness but a very serious one none the less. The project, which is based mainly in Ireland and is supported by Trinity College, Dublin and internationally, was launched in the European Parliament yesterday. It is important that this research is supported. We hope the project gets the required support and funding, both nationally and within Europe. At the launch yesterday, there were people from the United States, Germany and Italy who are supporting this initiative.

We are still dealing with homelessness today.

8 o’clock

It is probably ten years since I raised the issue of people being discharged from mental hospitals and institutions onto the streets. It has not changed but is still happening. A large proportion of people who are homeless have a mental illness. This debate is about homelessness and we appreciate its importance, but there is another issue that is marginalised, when it should not be, in respect of homelessness and people with a mental health issue.

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