Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising the issue. She highlighted a number of individual cases that underline a real crisis for those individuals and families. If she wants to provide the details of those individual cases to the Minister, Deputy Darragh O’Brien, I have no doubt that he will follow up. While the emergency accommodation system is undoubtedly under strain, emergency accommodation will be found for people who really need it.

The real answer for us as a country is to build more public housing. That is what we are back to doing now at scale as a country. There will be about 9,000 direct build social houses this year by our councils and approved housing bodies. That is what will help to provide permanent homes for people who are currently on the housing list and in some cases, unfortunately, are in emergency accommodation because they are effectively homeless. It is an absolute priority for the Government to address that issue. The availability of hotel accommodation at this time, as we all know, is under strain due to various reasons, including the fact that we have accommodated a very large number of refugees who have come to our country fleeing war, which is the right thing to do, and we have obligations to them as well. However, it has placed the system under pressure. There can be no question about that. We are working very closely with a whole range of service providers in this sector. We are providing much funding to different service providers to ensure that people who are in real need are afforded accommodation into the future.

The key thing is to make progress on the supply of new homes across all of the different types, because that is ultimately the best way to relieve some pressure in the system. If we are building more homes and we have a flow of people going from one type of tenure to another, for example, if people on the list are receiving a council home, which are being built now at record numbers, that frees up capacity within the current emergency accommodation system for people who currently do not have accommodation.

We fully understand the scale of this challenge, which for so many people – the more than 10,000 in emergency accommodation - has reached a real crisis point. It is our priority to address that by increasing supply and providing the support from the Exchequer to all of the service providers, local authorities, approved housing bodies and the LDA to provide more cost rental, affordable purchase and social homes. We are making progress on that front. The Minister, Deputy Darragh O’Brien, will be laying out again in the days ahead further steps on affordable housing initiatives.

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