Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Healy and his colleagues for tabling this important motion and allowing us to have a crucial debate. Sinn Féin will be fully supporting the motion. While we may have some differences on elements of the detail relating to the policy proposals, we fully support the intention behind all of them.

Last Friday, the latest homeless figures were published. As the Minister knows, a record number of people are living in emergency accommodation funded by his Department. The figure is 15,378, some 4,653 of whom are children. The Minister also knows that this does not reflect the true level of homelessness. It does not include women and children in Tusla-funded domestic violence shelters. It does not include men and women in religious institution-funded homeless shelters that are not in receipt of State funding. It does not include rough sleepers. It does not include any of those people with refugee status, with subsidiary protection or with leave to remain who are trapped in direct provision and are essentially using it as homeless emergency accommodation. The real figure is now in excess of 20,000.

What is really important about the motion is the call for the Government to have an emergency response. Not only are we not getting that, the Government is doing things to make the situation worse. On Monday, the Minister made a number of very important announcements. He announced the capital allocations for social housing acquisitions, including the tenant in situ scheme. That represents an actual cut on the money that was spent by local authorities on acquisitions, including for tenants in situ, last year. When we finally get the figures from the Minister by way of parliamentary questions, we will be able to definitively prove that. Dublin City Council is already telling its elected members that the total acquisitions allocation the Department has given them for this year is €22 million less than last year. That is the local authority with the highest levels of homelessness.

I agree with colleagues on the new restrictions the Minister has introduced by way of the relevant circular. He uses the phrase "focused and targeted", which means that fewer people will get it. In particular, the removal of refurbishment costs, the two-year rule and the retrospective application of the new rules to many applications pending since last year will mean people who would otherwise have got access to this vital homelessness prevention support will not now get it. I have already been contacted by two households. The first is that of a young woman in Dublin city with three children who cares for her father. Her tenancy with her landlord has been in place for less than two years. She has been told by Dublin City Council that she is no longer eligible. In the second case, I received a very distressing email yesterday from a pensioner couple in Cork who are very advanced with their tenant purchase application but who, because refurbishment costs are excluded and their sale was not closed, have been notified by Cork County Council that the application can no longer proceed. A young woman with three children and two elderly pensioners in their 70s are at risk of homelessness as a consequence of the Minister's decision.

What is also very concerning is that the funding is going to run out. There are hundreds of pending applications across the State from last year, 70 in my own local authority, over 70 in Dublin city and 100 or more in Limerick city and county. If the Minister provided less funding for this year, after the overhang is gone and even if notices of termination and eviction notices dip slightly, the money will run out before the end of the year and more people will become homeless.

I am also very concerned about the Minister's capital funding announcements in respect of social housing. I welcome every extra cent provided by the Government for social and affordable housing. I welcome every additional social or affordable home funded by the State. However, when the Revised Estimates were published in December, there was a €540 million shortfall between capital allocation for social and affordable housing this year and the outturn for last year. The Minister has closed some of that gap but he has not provided clarity on whether he is going to close all of it and significantly increase the funding. When I listened to him on "Morning Ireland", he talked about figures of €3.6 billion and €3.8 billion. He was being deliberately disingenuous. That is not capital spending for social and affordable housing, as the Minister knows from his programme heads. It is the totality of capital spending in his Department for social, affordable and private housing as well as for grants, upgrades and improvements. I want to know the total additional spend for social and affordable housing by programme subhead for this year. Will the Minister publish that information and put the issue to bed once and for all?

I strongly support the inclusion of measures relating to defective blocks in this motion. There are two urgent actions the Minister needs to take now. He needs to amend the underpinning legislation for the defective blocks scheme to allow people who are getting tenders from their builders to avail of the most up-to-date SCSI costings rather than those that obtained at the time of the grant application. He also needs to get the finger out on emergency fire safety funding to deal with apartments with Celtic tiger-era defects. It is two years and three months since the Cabinet agreed that scheme. It is a year and three months since the scheme opened. As the Minister knows, because he has met the affected families in Parkwest, not a single cent has been spent. We needed an emergency response. That is not what we have got so far from the Minister over the past 11 weeks.

See this speech in context