Carol Nolan (Offaly, Independent)

Tá áthas orm an deis a fháil inniu chun labhairt ar an mBille seo. Baineann an Bille seo leis an éigeandáil tithíochta atá ar siúl faoi láthair. I welcome this Bill. In particular, I welcome the call to fully restore and increase funding for vital homeless prevention schemes, especially the tenant in situ scheme and housing first. This issue has arisen at my constituency clinics. People are coming to me after experiencing the desperate disappointment of being told that the council or their landlord could not or would not enter into the tenant in situ scheme.

I will use the brief time available to highlight once again that we have a serious number of approved housing bodies, AHBs. This needs to be tackled. Is this value for money? There are 437 AHBs on the official register. I doubt that is value for money in that. In many cases, I doubt these entities are contributing a vital and important service, such as offering shelter. They offer shelter to victims of domestic violence. However, I feel they should be contributing more and that there should be value for money.

In regard to the 437 AHBs in a country this size, it begs the question about massive levels of duplication and the appropriateness of funding. I absolutely agree that we have to use all levers at our disposal to try to put solutions in place to solve our housing crisis. However, there is a sense emerging that what we have here is almost akin to a homelessness industry.

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