Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Independent)
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7. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the preparations he is making for the upcoming review with the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [27090/15]

Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Independent)
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The Minister's predecessor, Deputy Frances Fitzgerald, submitted the third and fourth reports to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. If the Government survives, I understand the Minister will represent us in January at an examination of those reports. Some of the subjects he will obviously deal with will be child poverty, which he just discussed, child protection, services for children, education, health, disability services and so on. I hope that among the issues he will cover will be the impact of homelessness on our children.

James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)
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The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child establishes the Committee on the Rights of the Child, comprising independent experts, as the monitoring body for holding state parties to account regarding compliance with the convention. That process involves states submitting periodic reports to the committee and appearing before it for the purposes of discussing the report submitted.

Ireland’s most recent attendance before the committee was in 2006 and its most recent consolidated third and fourth report was submitted to the committee in July 2013. Ireland is scheduled to appear before the committee again in January 2016. While the actual meeting date has yet to be notified, it will occur between 11 and 29 January.

Before meeting individual state parties, the committee receives reports from, and meets, civil society interests and national rights monitoring bodies. These contacts inform the identification of issues the committee intends to discuss with the state party concerned. In Ireland’s case the committee met such interested parties, including a meeting with young people as facilitated by the Children’s Rights Alliance, last month.

To my Department's knowledge, the committee also received three parallel reports, from the Children’s Rights Alliance, from young people with the support of the alliance and from the Ombudsman for Children. The information gained from these sources has culminated in the recent receipt of a list of issues from the committee, regarding the combined third and fourth report of Ireland, to which the committee is seeking a written response by 15 October 2015. The committee has made clear that the list of issues is not intended to be exhaustive and it should not be interpreted as limiting or prejudicing the type and range of questions which members of the committee might wish to pose in January.

Given the breadth of the UN Convention, the committee’s scope of interest is very extensive and essentially covers the responsibilities and activities of most, if not all, Departments and many State agencies. Consequently, engagement with the committee involves a very considerable exercise of cross-government liaison and consultation around issues that are relevant to particular Departments or to a number of Departments. The co-ordination work is the responsibility of my Department. In that regard, it has established liaison arrangements with all Departments to process issues identified in the run-up to meeting the committee on which input from the individual Departments would be required. The current position is that my Department is preparing to communicate shortly with other Departments on the contents of the list of issues recently received from the committee.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade liaises closely with my Department to facilitate communications to and from the committee.

Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Independent)
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Will the list of issues include the impact of homelessness on children, the children of those families - almost 3,500 - who are homeless in this city and county as well as other urban areas around the country? On 28 June, 1,122 children were in emergency accommodation. I represent dozens of families in that situation, as would the Minister and other Deputies present today. We know from meeting the children of homeless families that they are often very insecure and sometimes distressed. They are unable to get easily to school, to recreation and to other basic facilities. As the Minister will be aware from his constituency, living in hotels and guesthouses often makes it very difficult to have an ordinary child's life.

The Minister mentioned the parallel reports. Two of the organisations, including the Children's Rights Alliance, are focusing on the impact of homelessness on children. Along with some of my staff, I recently met Dr. Niall Muldoon, the Ombudsman for Children, to discuss the impact of homelessness on children. His report states, "The State must address delays in the provision of social housing and ensure that emergency housing support provided to families who are experiencing homelessness is appropriate to children’s needs."

Michael Kitt (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Deputy.

Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Independent)
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The Minister has said he was working with other Departments. Is he meeting the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Kelly? Is he bringing bring to his attention the very real distress and suffering of our children in this city this very minute regarding homelessness?

Michael Kitt (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Deputy.

Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Independent)
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What has the Minister done in this regard? He has said-----

Michael Kitt (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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I will come back to the Deputy.

Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Independent)
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-----that he is the Minister for all our children. What is he doing right now to protect our homeless children?

James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)
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The issue of homelessness has been on the Government agenda for quite some time. I am a member of the Cabinet committee on social policy. As Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, I am very concerned about the impact of homelessness on children. I am very concerned about the provision of accommodation and that emergency accommodation should reflect, in so far as it can, normality for those families. I accept that many times they do not if there are no cooking facilities, etc.

Equally, I am concerned, as I am sure the Deputy is, about other child protection issues forcing large numbers of people into less than ideal accommodation at times on an emergency basis. While it is necessary to avail of bed and breakfast and other accommodation of that nature on an emergency basis, they do not represent a long-term solution. There have been numerous meetings involving the Minister, Deputy Kelly, and me to address this issue at the Cabinet committee on social policy

Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Independent)
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In this region, has the Minister met the city manager, Mr. Owen Keegan, the Fingal county manager, Mr. Paul Reid? Has he or his officials met Mr. Dick Brady or members of the Dublin Region Homeless Executive? Does he have any plans to inspect the conditions in which these homeless families are forced to live for nine or ten months and in some cases more than a year?

Has the Minister spoken to the children on the issue? He mentioned that in the preparation of the report to the UN committee he had a parallel report into which children gave input. Has he spoken to them, even outside the type of information clinic or whatever situation he might meet these children? Has he actually looked at the accommodation and brought it to the attention of the Minister, Deputy Kelly, and the Taoiseach?

The situation we have now, in which the number of homeless children has doubled in eight or nine months, cannot go on. We need it to end. First and foremost, we need to stop children from being made homeless.

James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)
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I have met all the individuals the Deputy mentioned on more than one occasion. The Government's homeless policy statement was published on 21 February 2013 and makes explicit the Government's commitment to a housing-led approach to end long-term involuntary homelessness by the end of 2016. Significant measures are being taken, under the Dublin region homeless pilot scheme, including the homeless assistance payment, the Department of Social Protection's tenancy sustainment protocol and the purchase of NAMA properties. There are also a range of other measures relating to the allocation of local authority tenancies. Under these measures, key local authorities are required to prioritise homeless and other vulnerable households in the allocation of tenancies under their control. The four Dublin local authorities have been directed to allocate 50% of available dwellings to this cohort, while the local authorities in Counties Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford have been directed to allocate 30%. It is expected that as a result of this initiative at least 500 homes will be provided to prioritised households in the Dublin region, with a similar total for the other areas combined. These measures were identified in the Government's implementation plan on the State's response to homelessness in May 2014 and the action plan to address homelessness last December.