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

I thank the Deputy for raising this very important question. I acknowledge that we have a real and serious problem of rising homelessness in Ireland. More than 12,000 people today are in State-provided emergency accommodation.

Emergency accommodation is available for almost everyone who needs it but emergency accommodation is not the solution. We seek to avoid people having to use emergency accommodation in the first place. If they have to, we seek to get them out of emergency accommodation into a secure tenancy as soon as possible. Approximately half will spend six months in emergency accommodation and most will spend less than a year. In the life of a child that can be a very long time and I acknowledge that. It is important to point out that it is not the same 12,000 people all the time. People might spend a few weeks or a few months in emergency accommodation and sometimes, unfortunately, longer but we do our best to avoid them becoming homeless in the first place and we then get them out of homelessness into a secure tenancy as soon as we can thereafter.

In terms of solutions, the main solution is to prevent homelessness happening in the first place and the second is to continue to increase the amount of social housing we are building all the time, in order to increase the social housing stock we have so that people and families can be in more secure, State-provided social housing rather than the private rental sector. As for what we are doing to prevent homelessness, we are continuing to fund NGOs and charities such as Threshold that will give people advice on their rights and work with them to prevent homelessness happening in the first place. We do that through the local authorities as well. We have allocated funding for 1,500 additional social homes to be leased. With roughly two or three people in each house, that is maybe 3,000 to 4,000 people prevented from becoming homeless in the first place. There is also the tenant in situ scheme, which is now working very well. We have given authorisation for local authorities to buy 1,500 homes off landlords who are selling up. Again, with two or three people in each house, approximately 4,500 people will be prevented from going into homelessness in that way. Of course, we are also continuing to ramp up the supply of social housing. Last year more social housing was built in the State than any year since 1975. We intend to improve on that again this year and the year after but we have a long way to go before we make up for the deficit that built up over the years.

On the eviction ban, as I have said before, two eviction bans have been imposed on a temporary basis. Both happened while I was in government. I certainly have no ideological objection to bringing in an eviction ban. I have done it twice. The problem is that it does not work. As we saw from the most recent eviction ban, the number of people in emergency accommodation continued to rise pretty much every month when it was in place. All it does is make the problem worse in the medium and long term. It is made worse in the medium term because eviction notices build up and there is a bigger problem to deal with when it is lifted. In the long term, most significantly, it reduces the supply of homes to rent. That makes the problem worse in the long term. I can see the attraction of it as a short-term policy but we know from experience now, from the two eviction bans that happened, that it makes the problem worse in the medium to long term. That is why it is not a wise policy.

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