Dáil debates

Wednesday, 29 November 2017

Ceisteanna - Questions (Resumed)

Departmental Policy Functions

12:55 pm

Photo of Gerry AdamsGerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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1. To ask the Taoiseach the work of the social policy and public service reform division of his Department. [49005/17]

Photo of Richard Boyd BarrettRichard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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2. To ask the Taoiseach if he will report on the work of the social policy and public service reform division of his Department. [50209/17]

Photo of Brendan HowlinBrendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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3. To ask the Taoiseach if he will report on the work of the social policy and public service reform division of his Department; and if he plans to make changes. [50470/17]

Photo of Leo VaradkarLeo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 1 to 3, inclusive, together.

The role of the social policy and public service reform division is to support me, as Taoiseach, and the Government in delivering on the programme for Government objective of public policies and services which support a socially inclusive and fair society. The division supports the work of Cabinet committee B and the associated senior officials group. This covers social policy and public service reform and seeks to ensure a co-ordinated approach to policy areas such as education, children, equality and reform of public services. It also supports the work of Cabinet committee E and the associated senior officials group. They deal with issues relating to health, including improvements in health service delivery and the development of the Government's response to the Sláintecare report. The division also provides the secretariat for the Civil Service Management Board which is chaired by the Secretary General of my Department and oversees implementation of the Civil Service renewal plan and incorporates the programme for Government office which publishes regular progress reports on implementation of the programme for Government. The division is also responsible for liaison with the National Economic and Social Council, NESC, which falls within the remit of my Department and supports the north-east inner city initiative, including the programme implementation board and the oversight group.

The division also provides me with briefings and speech material on social policy and public service reform issues and participates in relevant interdepartmental committees with other groups. Given the nature of its role the division works closely with the line Departments which have day to day responsibility for specific policy areas.

1:05 pm

Photo of Gerry AdamsGerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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The Taoiseach has outlined the broad remit for the social policy and public service reform division but it is fair to say that its responsibility to ensure that public policies and services are socially inclusive and fair, that they concern equality, is not working. The Taoiseach has already acknowledged that a homeless citizen died yesterday and there are reports that another homeless citizen died today. The Taoiseach has extended his condolences to the family involved. I also extend my condolences.

The Peter McVerry Trust has said that seven homeless people have died in the past 12 weeks. That is totally unacceptable. This situation of course demands our condolences but it demands much more than that. We are told that 184 citizens are lying in the cold and it is bitterly cold now. It is reported that 50 adults were in the Merchant's Quay night café because they were unable to get an emergency bed. I know the Taoiseach dealt with this earlier but I would like him to outline again the emergency measures the Government has planned to help citizens sleeping on the streets, in shop doorways or in tents and to deal with the trauma for 3,000 children and their parents who will celebrate Christmas living in totally inappropriate accommodation. There are rumours, although I cannot support them, that some of those in hotels and boarding houses may lose their places because some of those establishments are looking for other customers. Will the Government revisit the Focus Ireland amendment to the Residential Tenancies (Amendment) Act 2015 to limit landlords issuing vacant possession notices to quit?

Photo of Richard Boyd BarrettRichard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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The Taoiseach may have received an email from Peter McVerry today pointing out that seven individuals have died sleeping rough in the past 12 weeks, which is both unprecedented and shameful. There is the shocking fact that 3,000 children are in emergency accommodation. Peter McVerry is asking for very specific things to respond to this. Will the Taoiseach agree to what he is asking for? He wants a formal assessment of the number of people sleeping rough carried out by local authorities; local authorities to provide a dedicated phone number for members of the public who can identify people sleeping rough in their areas so that help can be given to them; each local authority to have a dedicated rough sleeper response team with transport to cover out-of-hours periods; a commitment that rough sleeping would be ended completely by 2018 which he points out that requires between 250 and 300 people to be housed through the Housing First programme; and that each local authority draw up a Housing First plan to house rapidly and offer intensive case management to recently housed former rough sleepers. Will the Taoiseach agree to that?

I want the Taoiseach to reconsider the comments he made earlier about the problems of big social housing estates. This is the excuse for not delivering the scale of public housing we need on the public housing land that we have. Problems generated in social housing estates are not because of anything intrinsic to social housing estates. They are to do with the lack of infrastructure put into estates built in the past. We need large scale provision of council housing with the infrastructure and services but that cannot be an excuse for not delivering the scale of public housing we need to address this crisis.

Photo of Brendan HowlinBrendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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The social policy and public service reform division of the Department of the Taoiseach is a very important one. I understand the position of assistant secretary, the most senior in the division, is now vacant. When will it be filled?

I join others who have spoken about the announcement that two citizens of our country, rough sleepers, have been found dead on the streets in recent days. On my behalf and on behalf of the party, I send condolences to the friends and families involved. There are 8,000 homeless people, 3,000 of whom are children. The Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government has said that these statistics will worsen and that speaks volumes of itself.

Rough sleepers should be an isolated policy focus for the Government. This is a very complex issue and the solution is not simply housing. That is why the wraparound supports of the Housing First model have been recommended. This is the most urgent focus we need. What will the Government do to ensure that the needs of the 180 plus people who are rough sleepers will be addressed?

Photo of Micheál MartinMicheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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How many people work in the social policy and public service reform division and how many work on the Sláintecare report and policy which the Taoiseach says the Government is considering?

The Taoiseach indicated yesterday that the communications unit, which is under his command – he picked the head man for it - would organise communications campaigns particularly on the children's hospital. I would have thought that as the children's hospital has a bespoke legislative framework it would have its own public relations-----

Photo of Joan BurtonJoan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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It has.

Photo of Micheál MartinMicheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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It has been liaising with all Deputies for quite some time. The project goes back a long time over successive Governments.

Photo of Micheál MartinMicheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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It does not belong to anyone. It does not belong to the Taoiseach although he has sometimes claimed it does. The decisions predated the Taoiseach's role. The former Minister for Health, now Senator Reilly, had an impact. Mary Harney even had an impact but the planning derailed that project.

Photo of Brendan HowlinBrendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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It was in the 2011 capital programme.

Photo of Micheál MartinMicheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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My point is that there is a sense that the real function of the communications unit and the €5 million of taxpayers' money is to promote the Government and the Ministers, not the hospital. I genuinely believe there is a danger in how this grows and evolves. If a hospital is a self-contained entity in its work it is difficult to comprehend why its communications agenda is located within the Department of the Taoiseach. All the good news relating to it therefore is for the Taoiseach. The blurring of party politics with the Civil Service is a governance issue that the Taoiseach does not understand. We need to be very careful about it. I do not see why it is necessary to have a separate campaign on the children's hospital while there is a bespoke model and framework there already.

Photo of Leo VaradkarLeo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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The range of questions was diverse but I will do my best to answer as many as I can. Deputy Adams is of course correct in saying that approximately seven homeless people have died in recent weeks. Roughly speaking, between 40 and 50 homeless people die every year. Each one is a tragedy and very sad. People who are homeless die for all sorts of different reasons, whether physical health, overdose, addiction, mental health issues, suicide or violence on some occasions. That speaks to the fact that this is such a complex social issue and is not just a simple matter of providing shelter or housing. A range of supports is required, particularly in the health area, relating to mental health and addiction, and overdose in particular. That is a difficult problem that we face as a country. It is one faced all over the world.

Additional beds are being provided to ensure that we have a surplus number of beds available in the city and around the country.

Approximately 60 will come onstream today, with another 60 before the end of the week, on Little Britain Street and in Cabra. The intention is to have another 200 beds in single or double rooms. They are not Florence Nightingale institutional type accommodation. We will have 200 in place by 18 December and the intention is to ensure there is a bed and shelter available for everyone who wants it and needs it. This is something we want to ensure is in place not just for the winter period, but also through to spring and summer.

We have also had the development of the family hubs, of which people are aware, providing much more appropriate family-type accommodation, where people can make their own food and have access to recreational areas. As a result of the development of family hubs, the number of families with children who are being accommodated in bed and breakfasts and hotels has fallen since it peaked last spring. We hope to see more progress on this front in the coming months.

Housing First was specifically mentioned, and I mentioned it earlier myself. It is a programme to take people who are rough sleeping and provide them with housing, but not just housing. They need to be able to hang onto the housing so we need to put in place a range of social, health and other supports so they can stay in the house or apartment they are given and do not end up rough sleeping again. A total of 180 people have already been moved out of homelessness and rough sleeping into a Housing First model. At the request of the various charities and agencies that work in the sector, a national director for Housing First will be appointed. That appointment will be made in the next two weeks. I hope it will make a difference in the months and years ahead.

On public housing, as I mentioned earlier, 2,000 houses, or homes, will have been directly built by local authorities this year. This needs to be ramped up over time. It was only a couple of hundred a few years ago and we are up to 2,000 this year. It will be 3,800 next year, in addition to the voids being brought into use and long-term leases such as the Iveagh Trust one I was at a couple of days ago. I know people do not count them, but I think they should be counted and certainly the people living in them are counted. There are also direct purchases from developers through Part V and other mechanisms. These will bring the number of new social homes available to be occupied to more than 7,000 next year for people and their families. We will see a real ramping up in the provision of public housing in the coming years.

In terms of general supply, commencement notices are up significantly, as are planning permissions. We are seeing about a 50% increase in all of these, so we are starting to see the development of new homes and houses in Dublin and throughout the country, but it is coming from a very low base and we acknowledge as a Government that it will take time for us to get to the point where the number of new homes is meeting the demand for new homes and then to get ahead of it. This is not something we will be able to do quickly, and no Government would be able to do it quickly.

I was struck by the honesty of the Sinn Féin housing spokesperson at the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis recently, where he enunciated the Sinn Féin policy on social housing, which is to build approximately 10,000 a year until the housing list is cleared. That would still leave people waiting nine or ten years on the housing list before they would get their house. It would require two terms of Sinn Féin in office for people joining the housing list today to get social housing. I thought that was very honest. It is the reality of what it will take to get on top of these issues, because we cannot just ramp up social housing or private housing overnight. There are capacity constraints of all sorts, but we are going to ramp it up as quickly as we possibly can, and that is with regard to social housing as well as private housing.

1:15 pm

Photo of Seán Ó FearghaílSeán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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We will now move on to Question No. 4.

Photo of Brendan HowlinBrendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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On a point of order, the groupings are really bizarre.

Photo of Micheál MartinMicheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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The Taoiseach did not answer the question on hostels.

Photo of Leo VaradkarLeo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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I was getting to it.

Photo of Micheál MartinMicheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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The Taoiseach took his time to get to it.

Photo of Leo VaradkarLeo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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Ask it again in the next round.

Photo of Brendan HowlinBrendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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The next group starts with Question No. 4, which asks the Taoiseach his plans to attend the climate change summit in Paris on 12 December. The next group starts with a question I tabled, to ask the Taoiseach whether he plans to attend the climate change summit in Paris. It is the same question but it is in two different groups. Question No. 4 has been grouped with questions on Gothenburg and the social summit.

Photo of Micheál MartinMicheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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It makes no sense.

Photo of Brendan HowlinBrendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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It makes no sense at all. We will deal with the same question in two different groups. I suggest we deal with climate change in the next group and deal with Gothenburg in this group.

Photo of Seán Ó FearghaílSeán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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Is the Taoiseach happy with that?

Photo of Leo VaradkarLeo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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That is fine. We will deal with Gothenburg in this group and climate change in the next.

Photo of Seán Ó FearghaílSeán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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Over to you, Taoiseach.

Photo of Joan BurtonJoan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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I have two questions, one on Gothenburg and one on Paris.

Photo of Brendan HowlinBrendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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The Deputy will get two opportunities.

Photo of Seán Ó FearghaílSeán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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We will call you. You are here in front of me, do not worry.

Photo of Micheál MartinMicheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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Deputy Burton wins on both.

Photo of Joan BurtonJoan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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The Ceann Comhairle is very generous.