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

I thank the Deputy for his questions. On the quality of emergency accommodation, we brought in a new quality standards framework last summer, which was put together with the NGOs and local authorities and rolled out across Dublin. It is now to become the national standard. What we have seen in this crisis, because we have decongregated heavily congregated settings, is outcomes for individuals in those new settings that are far superior to what was there before. The feedback I got yesterday in my latest engagement with the NGOs is that people are more settled and they are healthier and happier. They are engaging with treatment and different resources with better outcomes. We are trying to do a piece of work on what it is going to cost to continue in that vein and from where we source the accommodation because not all of it is from the short-term letting sector; some of it is from hotels as well. Hotels in Dublin will, we hope, come back into use at some point in the future. We need to make sure we have plans in place now to prepare for that.

The Deputy asked about a rent freeze. A rent freeze was possible because of the emergency we are in. There are real constitutional constraints to implementing a rent freeze. There are also policy considerations that are worth taking into account, for which I have made the arguments many times before.

Thankfully, in this emergency, we were able to put in place a rent freeze. As I said, it can be extended by ministerial order, if necessary.

In regard to banking, I spoke with the Minister for Finance about this issue very early on, when it arose, and I also engaged with the Banking and Payments Federation Ireland representative group. I did not engage with the banks individually because the line Minister is Deputy Donohoe, but I did speak with him. I made sure that for the Rebuilding Ireland home loan, if we were going to be putting a holiday in place, it would not be at an extra cost to people and that interest would not be charged over that period. Therefore, people can engage with a mortgage holiday through their local authority lender and not be penalised for it, which is very important. I sat on the banking inquiry through 2014 and 2015, when they told us about the changed culture in the banks, but that was at the same time the tracker scandal was happening. I will leave my comments on the banks there.

There is sufficient PPE at the moment for NGOs and homeless services. One thing that has raised its head is that, in the next few days, we are going to get guidance on whether face masks are mandatory or advisable, which could change the quantity of PPE that we will need into the future. I have already asked the Dublin Region Homeless Executive to examine that to see what it will mean, and it is doing so. PPE gets provided through the local health point of contact.

With regard to strategic housing developments, SHDs, the most I will say in this interaction is that we do not start a fight. They have been extended out to the end of 2021 and no further. The next step was to tie "use it or lose it" planning permissions to SHDs and, in fact, I wanted to tie that to all planning permissions. It is something that has to be achieved by the next Government, in my opinion.

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