Results 10,401-10,420 of 34,729 for speaker:Seán Fleming

Public Accounts Committee: 2017 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 10 - Funding and Oversight of Approved Housing Bodies
Vote 34 - Housing, Planning and Local Government
2017 Financial Statements - Housing Agency (25 Oct 2018)

Seán Fleming: I ask Mr. O'Connor to come back to us with a summary on the land that is in the ownership of the agency, the number of sites involved and the income being received from those sites. How many hectares does the agency have in its name?

Public Accounts Committee: 2017 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 10 - Funding and Oversight of Approved Housing Bodies
Vote 34 - Housing, Planning and Local Government
2017 Financial Statements - Housing Agency (25 Oct 2018)

Seán Fleming: I ask Mr. O'Connor to send us a note on the current economic use of those 600 acres. We spoke about homelessness earlier. How many people are currently homeless? I think the figure is approximately 10,000.

Public Accounts Committee: 2017 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 10 - Funding and Oversight of Approved Housing Bodies
Vote 34 - Housing, Planning and Local Government
2017 Financial Statements - Housing Agency (25 Oct 2018)

Seán Fleming: Okay.

Public Accounts Committee: 2017 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 10 - Funding and Oversight of Approved Housing Bodies
Vote 34 - Housing, Planning and Local Government
2017 Financial Statements - Housing Agency (25 Oct 2018)

Seán Fleming: What of the figures that we requested earlier from Mr. John McCarthy? He referred to the fact that 4,729 people, both adults and children, exited homelessness in 2017.

Public Accounts Committee: 2017 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 10 - Funding and Oversight of Approved Housing Bodies
Vote 34 - Housing, Planning and Local Government
2017 Financial Statements - Housing Agency (25 Oct 2018)

Seán Fleming: That figure is just for adults. Is that correct?

Public Accounts Committee: 2017 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 10 - Funding and Oversight of Approved Housing Bodies
Vote 34 - Housing, Planning and Local Government
2017 Financial Statements - Housing Agency (25 Oct 2018)

Seán Fleming: When did the Department change from counting people to separating them into adults and children?

Public Accounts Committee: 2017 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 10 - Funding and Oversight of Approved Housing Bodies
Vote 34 - Housing, Planning and Local Government
2017 Financial Statements - Housing Agency (25 Oct 2018)

Seán Fleming: Is Mr. John McCarthy saying that the figures on those exiting homeless have only ever referred to adults?

Public Accounts Committee: 2017 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 10 - Funding and Oversight of Approved Housing Bodies
Vote 34 - Housing, Planning and Local Government
2017 Financial Statements - Housing Agency (25 Oct 2018)

Seán Fleming: How many children exited homelessness last year? The Department has given us the figure for the number of adults exiting homelessness. How many children exited homelessness in 2017?

Public Accounts Committee: 2017 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 10 - Funding and Oversight of Approved Housing Bodies
Vote 34 - Housing, Planning and Local Government
2017 Financial Statements - Housing Agency (25 Oct 2018)

Seán Fleming: These are people, not data. The Department is telling us that it does not count them. The Department does not collect data on the number of children exiting homelessness. Please explain that so we can determine whether it really is what it sounds like. How many children exited homelessness last year?

Public Accounts Committee: 2017 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 10 - Funding and Oversight of Approved Housing Bodies
Vote 34 - Housing, Planning and Local Government
2017 Financial Statements - Housing Agency (25 Oct 2018)

Seán Fleming: I ask Ms. Hurley to repeat that.

Public Accounts Committee: 2017 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 10 - Funding and Oversight of Approved Housing Bodies
Vote 34 - Housing, Planning and Local Government
2017 Financial Statements - Housing Agency (25 Oct 2018)

Seán Fleming: The Department counts children, dependants and adults. Is that right?

Public Accounts Committee: 2017 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 10 - Funding and Oversight of Approved Housing Bodies
Vote 34 - Housing, Planning and Local Government
2017 Financial Statements - Housing Agency (25 Oct 2018)

Seán Fleming: How many dependants exited homelessness last year?

Public Accounts Committee: 2017 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 10 - Funding and Oversight of Approved Housing Bodies
Vote 34 - Housing, Planning and Local Government
2017 Financial Statements - Housing Agency (25 Oct 2018)

Seán Fleming: In this crisis, the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government is telling us that it does not have a count for the number of children who exited homelessness.

Public Accounts Committee: 2017 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 10 - Funding and Oversight of Approved Housing Bodies
Vote 34 - Housing, Planning and Local Government
2017 Financial Statements - Housing Agency (25 Oct 2018)

Seán Fleming: It is very easy to count children. If six children are moving to a hub, one does not need a computer system to count them.

Public Accounts Committee: 2017 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 10 - Funding and Oversight of Approved Housing Bodies
Vote 34 - Housing, Planning and Local Government
2017 Financial Statements - Housing Agency (25 Oct 2018)

Seán Fleming: Can somebody not just work it out tonight or by the end of the month? Can somebody not gather data on the numbers of children who are homeless, the numbers that will exit homelessness in November and so on? I am amazed. This is the Committee of Public Accounts, which is chiefly concerned with money but if the Department is not even counting people or children, what is it doing? I am...

Public Accounts Committee: 2017 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 10 - Funding and Oversight of Approved Housing Bodies
Vote 34 - Housing, Planning and Local Government
2017 Financial Statements - Housing Agency (25 Oct 2018)

Seán Fleming: Does the Department accept that what we are hearing is bizarre? It is absolutely awful. The Department counts the adults leaving homelessness. Generally, the ratio of those people in homelessness is 2:1, adults to children. Approximately one third of those who are homeless are children. Roughly 3,000 of the 9,000 are children. The 9,800 figure includes children. Is that correct?

Public Accounts Committee: 2017 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 10 - Funding and Oversight of Approved Housing Bodies
Vote 34 - Housing, Planning and Local Government
2017 Financial Statements - Housing Agency (25 Oct 2018)

Seán Fleming: The public will have to bear with me on this. I thought we would have these figures presented to us but now we are trying to work them out ourselves.

Public Accounts Committee: 2017 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 10 - Funding and Oversight of Approved Housing Bodies
Vote 34 - Housing, Planning and Local Government
2017 Financial Statements - Housing Agency (25 Oct 2018)

Seán Fleming: We asked for information earlier in the meeting on the numbers who exited homelessness last year. I ask people to bear with me. I should not be trying to come up with this figure. The fact that this figure has not been recorded by anyone in the Department to date is awful. Mr. McCarthy mentioned earlier that 4,729 adults exited homelessness in 2017. He also said that 2,332 adults...

Public Accounts Committee: 2017 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 10 - Funding and Oversight of Approved Housing Bodies
Vote 34 - Housing, Planning and Local Government
2017 Financial Statements - Housing Agency (25 Oct 2018)

Seán Fleming: We will come back to it. I have put that in the public arena just to get the point across. The next matter I want to ask about is the figures we were given regarding the breakdown of the €1.4 billion in the housing budget last year, which is fine. Some €800 million of relates to build, acquire or lease. I will come back to the breakdown of that part. A further €296...

Public Accounts Committee: 2017 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 10 - Funding and Oversight of Approved Housing Bodies
Vote 34 - Housing, Planning and Local Government
2017 Financial Statements - Housing Agency (25 Oct 2018)

Seán Fleming: I am going to ask a simple question. Out of the €1.4 billion spent last year on the housing programme, how much was specifically spent on building houses? It is probably the question I should have asked at the outset. How much of the €1.4 billion was spent on housing construction, not acquisition, leasing, HAP, homelessness or house improvement grants?