Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Tomorrow, it will be 11 months to the day since the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government, Deputy Simon Coveney, launched the Rebuilding Ireland strategy in an attempt to address the spiralling housing and homelessness crisis. While it set out some ambitious goals, it highlighted again the Government's total ideological reliance on the private rented sector as a provider of housing. One of the Minister's many promises, which has been reiterated consistently over the year, was that by mid-2017 emergency hotel and bed and breakfast type accommodation for families would only be used in limited circumstances and would have largely been replaced by suitable permanent family accommodation through the delivery of additional housing solutions. Part 34 of Rebuilding Ireland includes a whole section on moving families out of hotels and recognises that accommodating family units in hotel arrangements is inappropriate for anything other than a short period of time. The document states an intention to move the existing group of families out of hotel arrangements as quickly as possible and to limit the extent to which such accommodation has to be used for new presentations. Deputy Coveney has continued to repeat that message over the past ten months, as has the Minister of State, Deputy English, setting 1 July as the target.

Over recent months in particular, I have received, like other Deputies, increasing numbers of calls from very stressed and distressed parents wondering what will happen to their families in the next six weeks. These are families who have been living in cramped hotel rooms for six, 15, 18, and 24 months and who are desperately hoping to be permanently rehoused. They are now waiting for a call to tell them whether they will be moved to the next temporary accommodation. They are hoping their children's school and support needs will be taken into consideration. The figures for April are late. The most up-to-date figures available are from the week of 20 March when 1,069 families, including 2,134 children, were homeless in Dublin. Of these, 712 were single-parent families. Another 187 families, including 429 children, were spread across the country with 118 of them headed by single parents. A large proportion of the Dublin families are from the constituency which I am very proud to represent, Dublin Bay North. Families have rightly pointed out that if they were in the private rented sector, they would be given notice of a moving date. With just six weeks to the Department's deadline, when will these families be told what their future accommodation will be?

At a briefing organised by my colleague, Deputy Boyd Barrett, earlier this week, my parliamentary assistant asked Mr. Mike Allen of Focus Ireland whether his organisation has any indication of what is happening, given that Focus Ireland is providing support to homeless families. It seems communication on the matter has been dire and Focus Ireland's understanding now is that only new families entering homelessness will be diverted into the so-called hubs and those in hotel accommodation will remain there until housed. Is this true? Will the Minister of State confirm this evening that only families who become homeless after 1 July will be diverted from hotel and guesthouse accommodation? What will happen to the thousands of children and adults now living in that accommodation?

When we first heard about the hubs idea, which are basically homeless hostels for families, I asked the Minister, Deputy Coveney, a number of parliamentary questions to try to ascertain the type of accommodation these hubs might be. Unfortunately the Minister evaded answering the question. He said the answer to the family homeless crisis will be increases in rent supplement and housing assistance payment levels. As the Minister of State knows, HAP is largely unavailable, in my experience, to families in homeless accommodation or coming out of homelessness. When will the Minister of State stop allowing landlords and developers to hold our country to ransom? Family homelessness has been a multi-million euro business for hotels, with €40 million paid in 2016 alone. How many houses would we have built for this? This is why I will support the motion later this evening on a FEMPI-type programme to end family homelessness.

It is utterly disgraceful that families in hotels and guesthouses have been put under grave additional uncertainty in recent months and up to the end of June. They have already endured incredible disruption and damage to their children's lives due to the closing down of social housing by the current and previous two austerity Governments.

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