Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is fair to say that the Minister gave that commitment in good faith and he wants to achieve it. The number one priority for us as Ministers and the Department is that people would be out of commercial hotels because they are not places to raise a family or to try to survive. Some people are there for 18 months to a year, which is not on. The aim is to get them into permanent accommodation. The Deputy was right to say that some will still end up in further temporary accommodation. While a hell of a lot better than a hotel, it is not the full answer for them. We are working with families so that they can transition into their full house.

I will give the Deputy some of the figures. Last year under the homeless HAP scheme, which has been a major addition to help us house people from homelessness, we targeted approximately 550 tenancies. We have reached more than 800 in 2016. These are people who were homeless and got into a house. This year alone there have been more than 600 new presentations that are now in a house under the HAP scheme. These are people who would be in hotels but who are being accommodated in homes. With new presentations and those in hotels, we will achieve these targets. However, I wish to stress that it has been very difficult because of the number of new presentations. While I am at it and given the Deputy was looking for them, I may as well give him the homelessness figures for April. The number of homeless adults is 4,972. The number of homeless families is 1,302. The number of dependants is 2,708. In Dublin only, there are 3,337 homeless adults, with the number of homeless families being 1,091. Again, those figures are slightly up. While we are making inroads in terms of our target of removing people from hotels, the overall number of presentations remain high. That is for a combination of reasons. We can look behind that story some day and see that.

In the weeks and months ahead, there will be more than 550 new family places available. These will help those who will present as homeless in the future. They will no longer be going into hotels. They will either enter a HAP situation or move into one of the family hubs and move on from there. It is important to deal with the hotels today, as well as the number of presentations. We are making great progress in that regard. I wish we could get ahead of it though.

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