Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I have already outlined the figures. A total of 7,148 people used State-funded emergency accommodation during a week in December. They included 4,643 adults, 2,505 dependents and 1,205 families. A record 2,700 families and individuals exited homelessness in 2016, while the figure in 2015 was 2,300. At the last official count in December 2016, 142 people were sleeping rough. The budget of 2017 is €98 million, up by 40%, and by mid-2017 hotels are only to be used for emergency accommodation in limited circumstances. Rent supplement and housing assistance payment levels increased last July and the Dublin regional homeless HAP pilot was expanded so that 810 additional households were supported last year, with the target for 2017 being 1,200. The rapid delivery procurement framework is now in place and allows local authorities to advance rapid build projects much more efficiently and effectively. A €70 million rolling fund has been established for the housing agency to acquire 1,600 vacant units, with 200 houses acquired in the past couple of months. There is ongoing work on additional family and child welfare supports for homeless families.

Dublin City Council delivered over 200 additional beds, worth €6.1 million, under the winter initiative. There are now more than 1,800 emergency beds in Dublin ensuring sufficient space for all those recorded as sleeping rough. DCC will bring forward two further facilities to meet potential future increased demand and these will cater for individuals and couples. There will be a tripling of the housing first target to 300 tenancies for complicated cases where a lot of attention is required.

Deputy Boyd Barrett referred to people in hostels with alcohol problems and I often wonder why this happens, when the charities who run many of these hostels are given substantial public moneys in addition to what they raise. The efforts which are being made to provide sufficient accommodation for this not to happen need to be looked at. People are reluctant to go into hostels because they feel they might be attacked or encounter somebody injecting themselves or under the influence of alcohol. The charities run these places but I am not blaming them.

My understanding is that the architectural design of Beacon South Quarter was as it should be, perfectly in order, but that, as in Priory Hall and Longboat Quay, the lack of supervision and a competent clerk of works to do the job properly resulted in inferior building standards. Greed was an element of this in the past where short cuts were taken and people paid big money, good money, for houses that turned out to be fire traps in the case of Priory Hall, and something else in the case of Longboat Quay, and this is of great concern to the tenants who live there.

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