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

In all of our minds today are the people who will spend Christmas in emergency accommodation and, in particular, the more than 3,000 children who will wake on Christmas morning in hotels, bed and breakfast accommodation, hubs or other forms of emergency accommodation. I acknowledge the very hard work of departmental officials and local authority staff, particularly those operating on the front line of the homelessness crisis. I acknowledge the staff in non-governmental organisations, approved housing bodies, volunteer groups and soup runs as without all that work, this crisis would be much worse.

This is a political matter and the reason that more than 3,000 children will be sleeping in emergency accommodation this Christmas Eve is down to the failure of Government policy. Since 2011, when Fine Gael first took office, the number of children in emergency accommodation has increased by over 300%. Since 2016, when the current Government took office, the rate has increased by over 20%. Since the Minister took up his current responsibilities, the total number of children in emergency accommodation on a given night has risen by 299. The length of time children are spending in emergency accommodation since Fine Gael has been in power has dramatically increased, from six months in 2014 to two years on average now. That is the position for many families in Dublin this year. This child homelessness crisis has been created by decisions made by this Government and that which preceded it. If next year is to be different and if we are to finally get to grips with the crisis, we must name those policy failures and make changes.

What has the Government done since taking office? First, it slashed investment in social housing from 2010 to 2014 to the lowest levels in the history of the State, pushing huge numbers of families into the private rental sector and driving up rental prices.

This led to families presenting as homeless. For those of us who have worked on this issue in close detail, we can see that this family homelessness crisis really started to accelerate in 2014. The problem was that despite knowing what the problem was, the Government at that time refused to take action over spiralling costs of rents, which was the single biggest cause of homelessness at the time. While I have had many other disagreements with Deputy Kelly, he at least tried to get the then Government to tackle the issue of spiralling rents. He was, however, blocked by Fine Gael.

Vacant possession notices to quit then became the primary driver of homelessness. What did the Government do? It refused to support many Deputies who wanted to change the Residential Tenancies Act - at the request of Focus Ireland - to block off that cause of family and child homelessness. According to the latest research, which tallies with what Deputies hear in their constituency offices, the biggest driver of family homelessness currently is chronic overcrowding and stress within families. Many of the young families who present as homeless are told to go back to where they came from. They are told to go back in to those overcrowded, stressful and at times completely unsatisfactory situations.

The Government has finally increased capital investment in social housing, which I welcome, but it is nowhere close to enough. While the Government finally took some action this time last year on spiralling rents, I believe this was too little and far too late. One of the most frustrating things for many of us is that while there is more funding allocated for social housing, the targets are too low and the speed of delivery is nowhere close to the level of urgency we require.

For next year the Government needs to focus on particular issues, on which it will have the support of many Deputies in the House. First, the Government needs to increase dramatically the targets for real social housing output. It needs to slash the length of time it takes to deliver those units. This means the Government must end its over-reliance on the private rental sector. Compare the figures for this year - there are 16,000 housing assistance payment tenancies to 4,500 real social housing units. This is continually driving the crisis deeper. We also must end vacant possession notices to quit through amendments to the remit of the Residential Tenancies Board. Many Deputies have argued for this measure. We must also acknowledge there are overcrowding and family relationship problems in order to find better solutions to ensure those people are not sent back to unacceptable sets of circumstances. Crucially, the Government needs to end the self-accommodation option for families trying to find emergency accommodation. The Minister could do this with the stroke of a pen. We need to end the use of hotels and reduce the length of time that families, especially families with children, are in emergency accommodation to six months or less. Unless we see a dramatic increase in the investment and targets for delivery of social housing, this crisis will get worse before it gets better. I urge the Minister to make this his priority from the start of 2018.

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