Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Jan O'Sullivan for providing this opportunity for the House to discuss the various actions on homelessness that are being implemented, and the various challenges and difficulties that remain.

Significant work is being carried out across the sector by housing authorities, approved housing bodies and homeless service providers to tackle and address the housing crisis and the serious challenges facing us. When I took up office, I made it clear that tackling issues of housing and homelessness would be a top priority for me and the Government. As I have stated consistently in this House, one homeless individual or family is one too many. A lot has been achieved in this regard in a short space of time but clearly, a lot more remains to be done.

I acknowledge the good intention behind Deputy O'Sullivan's Bill, intentions that I share and for that reason the Government is supporting her Bill.

Homelessness is about people, not statistics. Homelessness is about families and individuals in great difficulty and requiring great support. I see that when I meet individuals and families who are experiencing homelessness. They all have their own story and it is right that we help and support them. While the existing system has proved successful in providing for the emergency accommodation needs of homeless families with children, we can always do more and we will.

Deputy O'Sullivan has presented a Bill that puts children at the centre of decision-making by a housing authority when a family including a child requests accommodation assistance. The Bill requires the best interest of the child to be the paramount consideration, as does the Constitution, following an amendment that I am proud to say was put to the people by Fine Gael and Labour when in government. Protecting the best interests of children is already at the centre of our approach to housing families requesting assistance for accommodation.

It is why we ensure that any family presenting with children is housed safely overnight and why we seek to work with each family to address not just their accommodation needs but also their other support needs that may run alongside their immediate need for housing.

This afternoon, I want to set out for the benefit of Members, exactly what happens where a family with a child presents to our services looking for accommodation assistance. When I say our services, of course I am including Focus Ireland, the Simon Community and the Peter McVerry Trust, all of which are directed by the State to provide services to people in need of accommodation, in addition to the Dublin Region Homeless Executive and other local authority services.

In most cases, our experience is that families at risk of homelessness will begin to engage with homeless services before their existing accommodation has become unavailable, whether that be days, weeks or months before they are actually homeless. Where this can be done, it can help prevent homelessness because it allows the housing authority time to consider the various requirements of homeless families and to tailor supports and consider accommodation options.

In many such cases homelessness can be prevented from occurring. To date this year in the Dublin region, almost 600 households that engaged with the homeless executive at an early stage have avoided entering emergency accommodation and have secured a new private rented tenancy under the housing assistance payment scheme.

State-funded prevention service is available through Threshold, which can provide support and advice to families at risk of homelessness and can examine for validity any notice to quit they might have received. Furthermore the Dublin Region Homeless Executive's prevention officers will also work with the families presenting to consider if they are eligible for social housing and assist in the submission of an application if appropriate. They will also engage with the landlord on the family's behalf on issues where advocacy can assist.

However, often prevention is not possible and families will require immediate temporary accommodation. As I have outlined, families requiring emergency accommodation will usually have already been in touch with the Dublin Region Homeless Executive prior to becoming homeless but even where they have not, we can still help them as I will now outline. The executive's central placement service, which I visited recently, conducts face-to-face assessments with families on a daily basis until 4 p.m. The executive's freefone helpline number operates from 2 p.m. to 1 a.m. Monday to Friday and 24 hours at the weekend. Any family that has been previously in touch with the central placement service will have an existing reference number and consequently accommodation can be arranged for them via the freefone number if necessary.

Where a family seeks out-of-hours homeless services for the first time, they will be referred to the Focus Ireland family homeless action team, which provides the contact point under a funded service level agreement with the Dublin Region Homeless Executive. The action team will consider the presenting family's immediate needs and will work with them to secure hotel accommodation for that night. The next day, a more thorough assessment of the individual family's requirements will be conducted. Following this assessment and information session, the family will be allocated a caseworker, who will work with the family throughout their homelessness episode with a view to ensuring that they avail of the available supports. Occasionally it may not be possible to secure hotel accommodation for a family presenting late, particularly for larger families. This can occur during peak season. There are a number of contingency family units available in existing homeless facilities in such instances.

Our focus is as follows: no child will fail to be accommodated. The best interest of children is first and foremost a secure safe place to sleep and we will ensure this for any family who comes to us. What happens next is just as important and I want to take the House through our supports for day two, day three and the days after that in providing the supports that families need. We accommodate children and families in hotels as an alternative to them having nowhere to go. However, let me be very clear that hotels are not a suitable or secure form of accommodation for families and especially for young children for anything other than a short period and as an emergency need. I am absolutely committed to this objective. I want to get to a point where no family presenting to a housing authority as homeless has to rely on hotel accommodation.

This is one of the key commitments contained in Rebuilding Ireland but in the interim we have to use this accommodation as an emergency first step. I am pleased to say that the number of homeless families being so accommodated in hotels and bed and breakfast accommodation in Dublin is falling; it is still too high but it is falling. On the last day of September, a total of 690 homeless families were accommodated in hotels and bed and breakfast accommodation. That number is down from 871 such families recorded at the end of March.

The number of families in emergency accommodation in the Dublin region reduced in both August and September, which is the first time in three years there has been a reduction in consecutive months. We do not want families in hotels and, therefore, we are focused on providing more suitable transitional accommodation that is family friendly and has the services available to meet the development and welfare needs of a child, which a hotel clearly cannot.

These family hubs are family-focused and are a better response than a hotel but they are still only a first response. An amount of €45 million in capital funding has been allocated for these family hubs. There are now ten family hubs operational in the Dublin region and one in Limerick, providing temporary accommodation to approximately 300 families. Works are progressing on the delivery of a further seven hub facilities which should become operational before the end of the year, providing temporary accommodation for a further 180 families. Over the course of the coming two weeks I will open two new family hubs in Dublin alone. A further five hubs are already scheduled for delivery in 2018 and they will cater for more than 230 additional families.

These family focused facilities will offer family living arrangements with a greater level of stability than is possible in hotel accommodation, with the capacity to provide appropriate play space, cooking and laundry facilities, communal recreation space, while move-on options to long-term independent living are identified and secured. These arrangements facilitate more co-ordinated needs assessment and support planning, including on-site access to required services such as welfare, health, housing services and appropriate family supports. However, this requires a whole of Government response. Therefore, we have ensured that further additional family support services are being made available through the Department of Children and Youth Affairs by Tusla, the Child and Family Agency, such as a special provision under the existing community child care subvention programme of free child care for children from homeless families; Tusla’s school completion programme is placing an emphasis on children from homeless families; schools with home school community liaison co-ordinators are proactively engaging with the parents from homeless families to assist access to any other supports that may be of assistance; and children in homeless accommodation are being prioritised within the school completion programme for services such as breakfast and homework clubs.

This debate also requires that we acknowledge the significant activity that is, and has been, taking place to address issues of homelessness. The long-term solution to the current homelessness challenge is to increase the supply of homes. Accordingly, Rebuilding Ireland is designed to accelerate all types of housing supply; in particular, it seeks to increase the delivery of social housing by 50,000 additional homes over the period to 2021. I could quote a number of other statistics but I know statistics can be cold comfort to people, be they individuals or families, who are facing this crisis in their personal lives.

I thank the House for providing us with the opportunity to discuss this important issue. We must always discuss it. As Members of this House and people in public life, we must always keep this crisis in our focus because we know the very difficult circumstances that people are facing in these situations and we know our responsibilities to cater for those people, look after them and make sure we can help them through this crisis period into more secure, sustainable accommodation.

I am aware of the values held by our society and the threat posed to these values by homelessness. We are taking urgent action to tackle these issues. That requires more than housing and buildings, we have to look at affordability and new schemes that will help people to secure their own accommodation for themselves. That is why €25 million was announced in the budget for a new affordability scheme. To answer some of Deputy Jan O'Sullivan's questions, that is being developed as we speak. It will be announced very shortly. We have looked at the Ó Cualann model, which we know is successful on a small scale. We want to deliver that now at a greater scale and to secure those options for people who need our help. Sometimes a small bit of help can go a very long way.

With regard to the vacancy issue, we have established vacancy teams in each local authority in the country. We have an empty homes unit in the Department since July of this year. We have figures coming in from each local authority in the urban areas as to what vacancy potential they think is there. We know it is low-hanging fruit. By the end of the year I will have those figures from other local authorities around the country.

In the budget announced for 2018, a new incentive scheme for bringing vacancy out of the private stock into private use was announced. We also will be announcing changes to the repair and leave scheme to help bring vacancy into use for social housing purposes. A report from the Department of Finance will be commissioned to examine the potential of introducing a vacancy tax to see how that could also work as a stick to try to get more vacant stock back into use.

We recognise the problem of overcrowding, and Deputy Cowen referred to this. We are not rejecting the fact that we need to do more in this area. We have already announced ring-fenced funding for increased inspections next year. It is not that we do not think that an NCT-style system for private rental accommodation might not be an option worth pursuing. We believe that the option that is already being pursued by the Government might be a better, quicker and more powerful way of putting sanctions on rogue landlords - to call them landlords is a mistake - who seek to abuse people's human rights for their own personal profit. It is correct to say that we are not short of ideas but we are not short of action either. If we look at some of the figures, they will show there are improvements in many areas when it comes to the Rebuilding Ireland programme and other aspects of the challenge that we face, but other figures show that there have not been improvements and that matters have got worse. We must recognise that. We can learn from what others are doing but we can also learn the mistakes we have made ourselves on previous policy interventions that have not been successful.

I will continue to drive our actions on behalf of the State, the taxpayer and every citizen and implement them with compassion because compassion and care is what is needed. Homelessness is not normal. We must never, nor will we ever, treat a homeless individual or homeless family as being normal. We must always ensure that our interventions and supports that are put in place to help people in these very difficult times of crisis are put in place in a way that assures those individuals and families, and every other citizen in this State because we all have a stake in this, that we are meeting the housing and accommodation needs of our families and children. We are doing that to provide dignity for everyone to help them in this time of crisis and to make sure that their welfare and care is always paramount in the work we do with the voluntary sector and the local authorities.

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