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

The Peter McVerry Trust is an excellent organisation and is one of our partner organisations, which we fund to provide services for people who are homeless. Among the new facilities we were to open before the middle of December is one in Cabra, which is run by the trust and is already open. It is a very fine facility that is going to help a number of people into sustainable long-term accommodation. Inner City Helping Homeless is also doing good work. I have been out with its teams to see exactly what it is doing. It is hoping to be part of a co-ordinated effort under the Dublin Region Homeless Executive and we will try to progress that work because the group has positive motivation.

We are using compulsory orders very extensively in counties such as Louth and at the housing summit in January CPO powers will be a particular focus. We are not relying on putting everything on HAP and the numbers do not bear that claim out. We are building social housing through local authorities and housing bodies and we are acquiring more homes for the social housing stock, as well as long-term leasing homes. Responsibility for social housing was outsourced by previous Governments and we are taking responsibility back in a very rapid way under Rebuilding Ireland. We are also looking beyond 2021 to see if we can make it a permanent measure.

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