Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I want to take up the issue of the new research study that was published this morning, namely, Investing in the Right to a Home: Housing, HAPs and Hubs by Dr. Rory Hearne and Dr. Mary Murphy. The study was conducted as part of a Europe-wide examination of how to strengthen social investment. It says that the housing crisis has not yet peaked and is likely to escalate over the next five years. It also states that families can be severely damaged and traumatised from living in emergency accommodation, including family hubs. This study is based on international experience and research into Irish emergency accommodation. Does the Taoiseach agree that families and children should not - as the report and the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission recommend - spend longer than three months in emergency accommodation, including family hubs, and that this should be legislated for and there should be a commitment to close all hubs by December 2019? Does he agree there is a danger, as the study says, that the newly established family hubs could become a form of direct provision for poor families?

The report finds that the major reliance of successive Governments, particularly in the context of Rebuilding Ireland, on the private sector to provide social housing has contributed to the problems now facing the State where two thirds of new social housing has come from the private rental sector? The report finds a core tension between Irish housing and economic policy with one trying to address the social housing crisis and the latter encouraging and relying on the private market to deliver investment in housing. The report states that the absence of State investment in social housing negates the rights of the vulnerable. It also states that the housing assistance payment - a payment to households on the social housing list but living in the private rented sector - is not a valid mechanism to meet the right to housing. While the report makes this argument from a security of tenure perspective, it also notes that, from a cost perspective, direct-build social housing presents a far greater return on State investment and thus is a more cost-efficient policy option.

There are other points I want to make but I will conclude on this. Even Rebuilding Ireland's inadequate targets are not being met. The relevant figures show that just 200 new social housing units were built in quarter 1 of this year. There will be fewer than 1,000 new social housing units built this year, which is less than a third of the Rebuilding Ireland target of 3,200. Of the €1.3 billion budget for so-called social housing this year, just a quarter, approximately €390 million, will be capital investment in the new build social programme. The real test for the Taoiseach, his Government and his commitment to human rights and equality is whether he is prepared to say that enough is enough, that this is an emergency and that no family will spend longer than three months in emergency accommodation. He should put every resource available to the State into undertaking an emergency social housing building programme, beginning in the next month, in order to meet the target of 5,000 social housing units a year. This has to be done and the problem must be faced up to.

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