Dáil debates

Wednesday, 15 September 2021

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions

 

2:30 pm

Photo of Micheál MartinMicheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy raised the homelessness issue in the first part of his question. The Government's Housing for All strategy has fundamentally changed the State's approach to housing. Some €4 billion per annum will now be allocated to increasing housing supply - social housing, affordable housing, cost rental and private sector housing. We need housing supply to increase under all headings. A wide range of measures will be introduced. The legislative underpinning for those measures has been already passed through the Oireachtas in the majority of cases. Part of the Housing for All strategy is the total elimination of homelessness over the next decade. We have committed and signed up to that. Progress has been made in the past year. Fianna Fáil, by the way, has been in government for only the past 14 or 15 months and has not been in government for ten years, as the Deputy glibly throws out all the time. We need to increase investment in housing to get supply. Supply is the big issue for us.

The number of people in emergency accommodation has fallen by 7% in the past year. The current number of homeless individuals is 8,132, which represents a reduction of 23% from the 10,500 people recorded in October 2019 which was the highest number recorded to date. The current level of family homelessness is 48% below the peak figure recorded in July 2018.

For us, the housing first strategy is the key instrument in dealing with homelessness. We are working with the non-governmental organisations and the approved housing bodies in the homeless area to significantly increase supply. We are providing them with the resources particularly through the housing first approach, which I think most people accept is the preferable way to deal with homelessness in this country. We are very committed to that and the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, is certainly committed to dealing with it.

Regarding student accommodation, the Minister introduced legislation, the Residential Tenancies Act, to protect tenants, including students. We are also giving the capacity to the institutes of technology to borrow in order to provide additional student accommodation supply for students attending the technological universities and the institutes. For many years they did not have that capacity, which the universities had. We will be keeping a close eye to ensure the third level colleges do not charge exorbitant rates to students.

Obviously, the broader housing issue impacts on this because the more housing we develop, the greater capacity we develop in the market for students to be able to access accommodation at an affordable rate. At the moment we do not have the supply we need. We need to be building far more units across the board than we are currently building. Housing for All sets out a programme to do just that with very significant resources allocated.

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