Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change) | Oireachtas source

I support the Bill and thank Deputy Ó Broin for bringing it forward. I salute the Government for taking it on board and, I hope, implementing it.

The recent rise in the number of adults and children in homelessness is a worrying trend. We all know that. The latest figures in October showed an increase over September, with 8,737, including 2,642 children, in emergency accommodation, compared with 8,656, including 2,583 children, in September. A particular problem is the number of homeless single adults, which has surpassed 3,000 in Dublin and 4,495 countrywide for the first time since records began in their current format in 2015. Their number has gone up by 93%, an incredible figure, since 2015, and the number of families in homelessness has gone up by a staggering 230% since July 2014. These figures, as others have pointed out, do not include rough sleepers, women and children in domestic violence refuges, those trapped in direct provision who cannot access housing or those young people sleeping on sofas in friends' homes, sleeping in squats or in other insecure situations. We also have the scandal whereby the number of deaths of homeless people in the past year is now moving up to 60.

This Bill seeks to address one aspect of this crisis by putting an emphasis on prevention of homelessness by keeping people in their homes. The current situation is such that one has to be homeless before one may access assistance from the local authority. This Bill will place a legal obligation on the Minister and local authorities to intervene with a homeless prevention plan within 60 days if someone receives a legal notice to quit or if the local authority makes an assessment that a person is in danger of becoming homeless. For example, a young adult leaving care is almost certain to become homeless if he or she does not have family support. This also applies to people leaving prisons.

This is not a silver bullet. It must be seen as part of an overall emergency response to the housing and homelessness crisis. The key element of this must be a commitment to build public housing, both traditional local authority housing and cost-rental with affordable rent. The refusal of this Government, the previous Government and the Government before that to reverse their ideological stance on public housing is at the core of this crisis. This has to change because it will continue to be a crisis unless we deal with this. Unfortunately, it will only change when we have a Government that puts the right to a home before the interests of speculators, vulture funds and landlords.

Last week I raised a Topical Issue matter with the Minister of State concerning people who are homeless in Dublin but not habitually resident here being refused overnight emergency accommodation. It is still happening. I know that the Minister has written to local authorities. This morning Louisa Santoro said on RTÉ radio that the Mendicity Institution had in a guy from Wicklow who was refused accommodation last night by the central placement service. This has to stop tonight. No one should be out on the streets tonight, unable to access emergency accommodation, when there are beds lying empty. It just cannot happen.

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