Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Tánaiste is aware that in May, 1,300 families were living in emergency accommodation funded by the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government. That is almost 3,000 children who are living in hotels, hostels and bed and breakfast accommodation. These figures do not include the hundreds of adults and children living in Tusla-funded domestic violence emergency and step-down accommodation. Nor do the figures include the 247 adults and 152 children trapped in direct provision who have leave to remain but are unable to secure housing. The Government's monthly homeless report significantly underestimates the numbers of adults and children living in State-funded emergency accommodation. Child homelessness, as I have said many times before on the floor of this Chamber, has increased by a shocking 300% in the six years that Fine Gael has been in government.

Even more shocking is the length of time these families and children are being left languishing in hotels and bed and breakfast accommodation. Some 70% of homeless families have been in emergency accommodation for more than six months, with 40% in hostels and hotels for more than a year, and there are at least 200 families in emergency accommodation for between 18 and 24 months.

On taking office, the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, announced what many of us knew for months, which was that the July target set by the previous Minister, Deputy Coveney, to move families out of hotels and into permanent housing was not going to be met. Instead of permanent homes, these families have received letters telling them what kind of accommodation they will get at some point in the future. According to the Minister, one third are to be moved into permanent homes, one third into short-term and insecure housing assistance payment, HAP, tenancies and one third into family hubs.

I accept that purpose-built emergency accommodation for families is better than a hotel or bed and breakfast accommodation. However, it is not a home and cannot be presented as a solution to the homeless crisis. Yesterday, two important reports were published, one by the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and the other by Drs. Murphy and Hearne of NUI Maynooth. Both warned that family hubs run the risk of replacing one problem with another. They warned of long-term institutionalisation and of what one author called therapeutic incarceration. Thankfully, both reports make clear recommendations on how to avoid this. They call for independent inspections of all emergency accommodation, particularly those with children, a three-month legal limit to the length of time a family would stay in emergency accommodation, clear rehousing targets to give these families the homes they so desperately need and a legal sunset clause that all hubs would be closed by 2019.

My question is very simple. Will the Government support and fully implement these key recommendations?

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