Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

We are again discussing child homelessness in the House. Something needs to happen. We need progress and a change of policy but there is no evidence of those. The most recent figures available were compiled at the end of October and show that 25 more children were living in emergency accommodation than was the case the previous month. Children make up the biggest group of homeless people in the country. New figures will be released next week. I have no great expectation that they will show an improvement in the situation. We normally receive the statistics at the end of the month. Nothing seems to be changing for the better.

I have before me a leaflet produced to promote Rebuilding Ireland, which was launched more than three years ago. Pillar 1 of the plan regarded addressing homelessness. Although it laid out very fine intentions, the situation has consistently worsened. Something must be done to break the cycle. I wish to explore whether there are specific proposals to which the Government will agree. I acknowledge that the Minister of State, Deputy English, who is present, is genuinely concerned about homelessness and homeless children, but we need changes in policy, as was noted by previous speakers.

One measure which must be undertaken is to speed up the construction of affordable homes and, in particular, social homes using State land. In spite of the fact that we are told that money is no object, local authorities have indicated that schemes which must go back to the Department are being delayed. The local authorities are not totally blameless either. Information was released today or yesterday regarding funding allocated for Traveller accommodation not being spent by several local authorities and I do not exonerate local authorities either. The Department and local authorities cannot continue to bat developments back and forth between them while more and more children become homeless.

I am aware of several relatively large families from a Traveller background which are in homeless accommodation and some of which have been in hotels for a long time. The Minister previously acknowledged that there is a particular difficulty in respect of large families. Surely, something can be done about that. I ask the Minister of State, Deputy English, to give that issue specific consideration. Most local authorities do not build four-bedroom or five-bedroom accommodation and that needs to be addressed. Construction takes time. I would not normally advocate the usage of funding to acquire houses but we need to quickly intervene on behalf of larger families. The purchase of larger homes is one practical measure that could be taken to reduce the number of homeless children. I know of several large families which are being housed in hotels. It is difficult to find long-term accommodation for them because the local authority does not have large enough homes. That is one of the practical things that needs to be done. It is a very broad issue. I do not know exactly how many of the nearly 4,000 homeless children come from a large family but I suspect it is a fairly large percentage. That is one proposal I ask the Minister to consider.

All Opposition parties support the introduction of a rent freeze.

Fianna Fáil has recently come on board with that idea. The only party unwilling to implement a rent freeze is Fine Gael, which is the party of Government. Such a freeze was previously imposed in 2015 or 2016. Another speaker referred to it being done in other parts of the world. Berlin recently froze rents for five years. It can be done. Many of the families who become homeless are coming out of the private rental sector. It is either because their rents have been increased or they have been given notice of termination. While the Bill we dealt with recently makes some improvements, the Opposition proposed a number of measures that would have reduced the number of families who are kicked out of their homes, particularly where they are being put into homelessness because of the sale of a property. That needs to be tightened up and families need to be protected.

The Minister of State mentioned a place-finder service but in my experience, those HAP place finders are doing a limited amount. I understand that there is a restriction on how much extra money can be allocated to keep people in their homes. I am not advocating putting a pile of extra money in the pockets of private landlords.

Prevention of homelessness is key. Other countries require local authorities to intervene and there is an obligation on them to be informed very early on when a family is given notice. A certain amount of that goes on in Ireland but the system is not sufficiently tight. Also, the intervention does not happen early enough.Those are some of the practical things that can be done to prevent children being forced into homelessness with their families.

As I have mentioned several times, I produced a Bill on behalf of the Labour Party. It went to the committee for pre-legislative scrutiny a few months ago. I thank the members of the committee - I am not a member of the Joint Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government. The Bill had good pre-legislative scrutiny and the committee was very supportive of it. I got communication back indicating that the Minister has a certain amount of time in which to consider the Bill before it goes to the next Stage. I strongly urge that the Bill proceed. It will not solve all the problems, but it will oblige housing authorities to take into account the needs of a child as a member of the family, rather than to just treat children as dependents of homeless adults. Organisations like Focus Ireland believe that subtle difference will make a difference in ensuring that they are given absolute priority and that, for example, families are not sent to Garda stations or told to go off and find their own accommodation. If that legislation goes through, it will make a difference.

While that measure would help, Opposition parties have agreed on the right to housing. A number of us were involved in the Raise the Roof campaign, which called for a right to housing, which exists in more than 80 countries. The Ombudsman for Children has advocated for that, as have a number of other human rights organisations. We have seen no movement from Government on that measure.

All of these things make a difference but no single one will solve the problem. What is happening at present is not solving the problem, which is getting worse. We should not have to come back to the House to debate these issues time and again without seeing some progress and seeing the figures going in the opposite direction. I do not believe that will happen unless some of these measures are implemented. Other Members have made proposals similar to mine. We need to see action on the part of the Government. We need this to be treated as the emergency that it is.

I welcome the work of the Joint Committee on Children and Youth Affairs in publicising the human cost. Deputy Mitchell cited some of the individual children and their situations. At a conference about two years ago I heard Kitty Holland, a journalist with The Irish Times, describing the effect on individual children she had spoken to who were living in hotels. We have all met in our clinics people whose children are not able to have any kind of normal childhood when they are living in these circumstances.

We are approaching the end of November 2019. We need to see a shift that changes the statistics so that month after month we will not be saying that more children are homeless. I hope we can get some practical outcome from this debate.

See this speech in context