Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

On Focus Ireland's request, of course we want to achieve a limit of no more than six months in emergency accommodation. It is one of the reasons we have expended huge resources on putting family hubs in place as well as the supports in those hubs to help families transition from emergency accommodation, which should and can only be temporary in nature. Many families are being moved through those hubs into long-term tenancies and social housing well within that six month period. Of course we agree that no family should be sleeping in a Garda station. We agree with those things. In terms of the request that every family has a case worker, my understanding is that we are working with individual families. Whether they are in hotel accommodation, which is not suitable and which we need to move away from, in hub accommodation, which is only suitable for a temporary period of time, or in some other form of emergency accommodation, we have to work with those families to transition as quickly as possible into sustainable tenancies or into longer-term social housing.

All those things are happening and are under way, but the numbers are still significant. We recognise that, which is why the budget provided a dramatic increase of resources committed to this issue, including €2.4 billion for next year, a 26% increase - almost €500 million - to ensure that we add an extra 10,000 social houses to our housing stock next year and that we deliver an extra 25,000 homes generally across the housing market, as well as focusing on affordable housing programmes, increasing dramatically the resources for housing assistance payments, HAP, spending another €60 million on family hubs, both outside Dublin and in Dublin, and increasing the expenditure on homeless services to help support families through very difficult periods in their lives. An extra €30 million has been provided to that end, bringing the total to €140 million. When one considers the funding for homeless services four or five years ago, or even two or three years ago, we are now talking about multiples of what was available then. We are responding in terms of resources and policy, but it will take time to make the kind of impact on homelessness that we all want to see.

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