Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There were about 2,700 exits from homelessness last year and 3,000 preventions. Perhaps the reason there were more exits from homelessness during the pandemic is that, because of the restrictions on domestic and international travel, there was simply more accommodation available, with people not coming into the country and tourists not taking up the accommodation. There were many other factors at play during the pandemic that helped to reduce homelessness, and that is now very evident. That the moratorium was not effective in bringing down the number of people homeless in the past six months proves that.

I outlined earlier the decisions we have taken. We are authorising local authorities to purchase 1,500 homes this year and we will fund them to do it. If a landlord is selling up who has a social housing tenant on the housing assistance payment, HAP, or the rental accommodation scheme, RAS, local authorities will be encouraged and enabled to purchase the property so the person or family does not become homeless in the first place. We are going to give private renters the right of first refusal and help them to buy. It will not work for everyone but it will work for some. We have also decided to lease an additional 1,000 social homes to accommodate people who are becoming homeless. We have also signalled very clearly that there will be tax measures in the forthcoming budget to encourage landlords to stay in the market and to encourage more to come in. There will always be landlords leaving, but there are zero entering now and that is a very big problem and something we need to address.

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