Barry Cowen (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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1. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government the status of the action plan target for removing the use of commercial hotels for short-term emergency homeless accommodation; and the alternatives that will be put in place. [9429/17]

Barry Cowen (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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My question relates to the commitment given in the Rebuilding Ireland document to removing people from a situation in which they have to reside in hotels and emergency accommodation. Will the Minister elaborate on progress in that regard? I am conscious that some of the units into which people are being moved before they get permanent housing are being managed by housing agencies or associations and have tenancies attaching to them. This was relayed to me yesterday. Is it causing an issue for some people in those tenancies when they expire or go beyond the tenancy? Is it causing difficulties in its own right as well? Is there provision that it will not be the case in this instance?

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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The Deputy will receive my written reply but I will give him a verbal answer because it might be more helpful. A significant number of families have been housed or we have found homes for them. There have also been significant numbers of families coming into homelessness. The figure was 87 in the month of January. The challenge is to reduce the numbers coming into homelessness and accelerate the numbers coming out. We have an agreement with the CEOs of the four Dublin local authorities to try to share the responsibility here for transitioning families from hotel rooms into more suitable accommodation. The majority of those will be into social housing, either through rapid build social housing, conventional social housing or social houses that have been purchased or brought back into use from voids.

We will also be very proactively using the homeless housing assistance payment, HAP, which was very successful last year. There were approximately 800 homes found for individuals and families through the latter. Some of the families will be in what we call family transition hubs on a temporary basis. It is emergency accommodation specifically kitted out for families with homework clubs, facilities for children and much more normalised family-style facilities in terms of where people eat that are safe and clean and so on. Respond! opened one in Drumcondra at the start of the year that can cater for 32 families. It is quite a successful model. We want to have that type of approach available for families so they can be looked after on a temporary basis while we find a transition for them into either long-term tenancies or social housing, which is ultimately the answer here.

Barry Cowen (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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The Minister mentioned the family transition homes. I am concerned that people on waiting lists do not have the same opportunities available to them if the transition homes have leases of up to two years' duration. It was a bold commitment that was made in the document. I acknowledge that and wish the Minister every success with it. I hope the target of ending that as a source of accommodation by June 2017 can be achieved. Four options will be available between now and then. As an example of the Minister moving in the right direction, how successful has it been since the document was produced? How many families have been moved out of commercial hotels since the document was produced? Does the Minister have an idea?

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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Last year 2,700 housing solutions were put in place for homeless individuals and families. I will have to get the figure for the split between the two but many were families. If one looks at the figure for January, which was not a good figure overall in terms of homelessness and which people have commented on, the number of homeless adults has increased. That was not a huge surprise to us considering that we put a lot of extra emergency beds into the system. Those beds have been filled by and large so it is not surprising the numbers are up somewhat. If one looks at the number homeless families, it is down by 33 and the number relating to dependants is down by 98. We are making some progress there considering 87 families came into homelessness in that month. The truth is that in the past number of months we have managed to stop the significant increase by taking a lot of people out of homelessness as quickly as possible. We need to ensure that we slow down the numbers coming into homelessness and continue to increase the pace in which we can facilitate the transition out of emergency accommodation. I am still confident we can do that by 1 July; I have always said it would be in the first half of this year and there will obviously be a difference. That only gives us four months. It is a big job to get between 700 and 800 families out of hotel accommodation and into appropriate accommodation in that period of time, but we are determined to do it.

Barry Cowen (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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Will the Minister forward the figures relating to what has happened since and the projected figures between now and 1 July?

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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If it helps, I can go through the projections we have done with the local authorities. I can do that with all spokespeople if they would like to see them so they can see what we are trying to do. It is ambitious but it is credible.

Barry Cowen (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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Will the Minister quantify what has happened to date since the publication?

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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We can do that too. It is no problem.