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

I thank the Minister for his answers to which I will respond. He missed two questions, one of which is really important. We have a situation in Dublin where single men in particular are seeking to present as homeless. They are not able to access assessments in a timely manner and they are not able to access emergency accommodation and, therefore, they are being forced to sleep rough for periods of time. Some of these people may not have presented to homeless services before. Some of them may have come from other local authorities but the reality is they are now here in Dublin, and therefore sending them back to a local authority would be in breach of the HSE's own public safety advice. I urge the Minister to sit down with his officials and the Dublin Region Homeless Executive to resolve the problem. We are not talking about large numbers but I am concerned at the very fact that people are being denied access to emergency accommodation where there is an extra volume of it. Staff in the Department and in the Dublin Region Homeless Executive have the names and dates of birth of the individuals concerned because I forwarded the information to them.

With respect to the research by the ESRI, the second part of the question was, if the Minister is still in office, and he may well be, whether he will commit to engaging with the sectors and with Opposition politicians on the way to dealing with this issue? I have a real fear that we are going to see a very significant rent arrears debt burden. We can see from the ESRI data already that young people and people in those sectors of the economy that have a tendency to be renters are disproportionately affected by the loss of employment. Rent supplement is available.

However, the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection is not doing enough to promote that payment. There have been 3,000 extra claimants in the last four or five weeks. That surprises me as I thought it would have been larger. I suspect we will have a real burden and that is not only bad for the individual renters but also the landlords and the rental sector. We do not want a situation where when the restrictions are lifted on notices to quit and evictions that we have a significant increase in landlords seeking to exit because they have lost money and in tenants being issued with notices to quit. Some rent arrears debt-burden resolution process will need to be put in place. Again, some of us have done some work on this.

The Minister will have about a minute to reply before my colleague comes in for his four minutes. I am really concerned about local authorities. Yesterday, Cork managers told their elected members that they already have a €9 million shortfall from non-commercial rates. I am encouraged by some of what the Minister says but I suspect there will be some difficulties there. Will the Minister commit, in as far as he can make it, that no local authority will be left with less money this year than they would have had otherwise, so there are no losses to staff or vital frontline services?

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