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

We have a five to six-year plan in place in Rebuilding Ireland to dramatically transform our housing sector and rebuild it in a way in which it cannot break as it did before. If we look for a quick fix, we will get a quick break and we do not want that. We want to make sure that when we provide supports for people to get housing that they will not lose it in the future and that as we build thousands of extra homes, that will not stop if there is a future shock in the economy. The Deputy talks about us being in government for eight years but house prices were still falling in 2012. We emerged from the bailout in 2014 and people thought we would need to avail of a second. Since then, we have focused on some of the low-hanging fruit such as council vacancies and voids. We have brought thousands of these back into use and that has been very important. We have to give every care that we can. Fingal and the other Dublin local authorities have had to do and are doing a lot of work to make sure that families and individuals who find themselves in this crisis get the supports that they need.

Over the past three months, we have seen the number of presentations in Dublin decrease and we saw 44 families present in Fingal in September. Some 27 families were prevented from entering emergency accommodation because of the work the local authority did. Some 17 families unfortunately entered emergency accommodation but 11 families exited it. That speaks to the amount of work that the local authority in Fingal is doing. The net increase in September was six families. We want no increase but for the numbers to go down continually. Until more houses are built, we will have to continue to put in place supports such as HAP. The additional supports for someone in receipt of HAP are the HAP uplift of 20% if necessary or the homeless HAP uplift of 50% if necessary. We also have placefinders in place to help people source accommodation and those are doing one of two things. They go into hotels to help people out of hotels or when people present, they go out with them to prevent them from having to enter emergency accommodation in the first instance. Fingal needs extra resources and I have told the council it can have those extra resources. The rent and deposit will be covered too to make sure there are no unnecessary delays in getting people into secure, safe accommodation.

See this speech in context