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

The Housing First programme provides direct access to housing and to the intensive health, addiction and personal supports required for people who are homeless and have complex needs to maintain their tenancies. We all know that emergency accommodation should only be a first response. We want all homeless people - individuals and families - to be moved on to more permanent housing quickly. Many homeless individuals have complex needs that require supports beyond housing. We must work with the homeless individuals one-on-one so that root issues can be addressed and managed to help with independent living in the long term. This includes rough sleepers, long-term users of emergency accommodation, young people exiting care and those exiting institutions such as prisons and hospitals.

The Housing First programme is critical in this regard and provides direct access to housing and intensive health, addiction and personal supports required for people who are homeless and have complex needs to maintain their tenancies. While using this model, 180 new tenancies have been created in Dublin under a consortium contract between the DRHE, Focus Ireland and the Peter McVerry Trust. We are now extending Housing First to all major urban areas outside of Dublin. The housing authorities in Cork, Limerick and Galway are working closely with the HSE and non-governmental organisations with a view to delivering 100 tenancies starting next year. As I said earlier, we are moving to appoint a national director of Housing First, who will be recruited shortly, to support the delivery of this important programme.

This programme is being extended to other urban areas and we will work with the HSE and NGOs to ensure that those tenancies are delivered next year. In addition, €350,000 in funding is being provided to NGOs to appoint exit co-ordinators to support those exiting homeless services and report to the DRHE. The homeless inter-agency group established following the housing summit in September to deliver homeless services in a coherent and joined-up way between the relevant Departments and agencies has also met on several occasions and is working specifically to improve the homeless help supports and mental health addiction services in emergency accommodation facilities. In 2018, community mental health services and support teams will engage with homeless action teams to improve outcomes for people who are homeless and have mental health issues. Multidisciplinary teams, addiction and mental health and primary care will be part of the Housing First initiatives for individuals in Dublin and other main urban areas. These are real, tangible services and supports available to individuals who find themselves in this unfortunate situation which can have a meaningful and positive impact on their lives. They are more structured, more secure and safer and more likely to lead to a long-term solution for homeless people than the proposals in the Bill. For that reason, the Government must oppose it.

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