Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Fianna Fail)
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4. To ask the Minister for Defence if he or his Department has been informed of the number of former members of the Defence Forces that are now homeless; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [5867/14]

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Fianna Fail)
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It is fortuitous that this question is being raised in the aftermath of the point made by Deputy Clare Daly. My question focuses on the relatively small cohort of people who have had great difficulty in making the transition from being members of the Defence Forces to being civilians. The problem for some is a difficulty in securing housing accommodation. Currently there are three hostels for former members of the Defence Forces operated by the Organisation of National Ex-Servicemen and Women, ONE. I pay tribute to Ollie O'Connor and others involved in that initiative.

Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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The issue of housing and homelessness is a matter in the first instance for the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government. A similar perspective was taken by my predecessors. As a matter of course, my Department does not provide homes for retired personnel, and for many years a process of phasing out married quarters for serving personnel has been in place. As such, my Department has no information on the number, if any, of former members of the Defence Forces who may be homeless.

My Department provides an annual subvention of €40,000 to ONE, which is dedicated to looking after the welfare of former service personnel of the Irish Defence Forces by way of providing accommodation to homeless, elderly or disabled members in need of such domestic accommodation and shelter and other assistance that may be required.

The organisation is a limited company with charitable status. It provides accommodation with 30 places in Smithfield, six places in Athlone and six places in Letterkenny. Any retired soldier, male or female, may contact the Smithfield centre directly and ONE will assist by directing the person to other facilities within the health services or the local authority services, or by offering a room, if vacant, in Dublin, Athlone or Letterkenny.

The funding from my Department is provided to support the general overheads of the organisation and expressly not for the provision of services that are provided to citizens, including members of ONE, by other State services, such as housing, health and social assistance. Dublin City Council continues to support the ONE homeless initiative in Smithfield. This support is very welcome.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Fianna Fail)
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The Minister cannot come in here and absolve himself entirely of responsibility for those people who leave the Defence Forces and who will have been institutionalised in some respects with the result that they become homeless. The Minister says his predecessors did likewise. I say they were wrong to approach the issue in that way and I say that the Minister is wrong now and that he has a responsibility to look at what is a manageable problem but one that none the less requires some level of ministerial involvement. It costs about €600,000 to run the three hostels in Athlone, Dublin and Letterkenny. The question is whether there is a need for hostel accommodation in other parts of the country, such as in the southern command area and in the Curragh area. If the Minister proceeds to evict the families in the Curragh, there will be a need for emergency accommodation for those people. This is a real issue and the Minister cannot pass on that responsibility entirely. I agree the Departments with responsibility for the environment and health have some responsibility, but the Minister also has a responsibility in this area.

Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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It suits the Deputy for party political purposes to emote on what is a serious issue. His own party was in government for over a decade and did not address this issue. His party took the view that housing and accommodation issues are matters for local authorities and for the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government. The Deputy's emoting does not change that situation. The Department of Defence cannot assume a housing provision mandate. What the Department of Defence can do is be supportive of the charitable organisation ONE. Of course I would welcome if that organisation, as a charitable body, was able to raise funding to provide additional hostel facilities. The Deputy expects that a magic wand can be waved and he disavows any responsibility for this situation during his many years in this House while supporting his colleagues in government who took the same approach. There is a significant credibility gap between what the Deputy says on behalf of his party and what it did during the years when it dominated the Government.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Fianna Fail)
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The Minister is wrong again. In County Kildare, for example, when my party was in government and when we had the control of the local authority, we operated a policy whereby 10% of the local authority houses delivered in the Newbridge and Kildare area were retained for people who were classified by the Department of Defence as over-holders.

I have been directly involved with the local community in Suncroft in developing a voluntary housing association, which has housed many people who would otherwise have become over-holders in the Curragh Camp. The Minister will not be aware of the detail.

The broader issue is that for a limited number of members of the Defence Forces, making a transition from military life to civilian life is a problem. The Minister cannot completely absolve himself of responsibility for addressing that issue.

Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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The Deputy has just confirmed the position. The initiatives in which he was engaged were to encourage, in so far as he was engaged in them, Kildare County Council to take up a responsibility for individuals who were clearly in need of housing and to engage with the trust that sought to deal with these issues. He has made exactly that point. Why did the Deputy so deal with the matter? He did so because he knew it was not the responsibility of the Department of Defence, nor appropriate to the Department, to so deal with matters. I would welcome further engagement from Kildare County Council, with which my Department has engaged with regard to over-holders. We seek to do what we can in that regard.

The Deputy has just established the truth of what I said. Any action he took when his party was in government was not to urge my predecessors to take on this responsibility but to seek engagement from the local authority. I would welcome such engagement but we all know that due to the fact that the economy got into difficulties and the Deputy's party in government destroyed the public finances, the amount of funding available to local authorities to meet accommodation and housing needs across the community - not only among former members of the Defence Forces - is terribly limited, unfortunately. I wish there were more funding. Perhaps if there had been greater economic intelligence in government in the years between 2000 and 2011, we would not have found ourselves in this position and we would have the type of public authority housing building programme that all of us in the Government would like to see, rather than engagement in this sort of cynical play-acting in the House.