Martin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I also welcome the Minister. This is our first opportunity to welcome the Minister since his significant announcement last week about a multi-annual social housing programme, which is ultimately the one way of reducing homelessness. As we all know, homelessness is a very complex problem, which requires multi-agency intervention to resolve. Many homeless people unfortunately have drink problems and other addiction problems and from a health perspective we need a significant increase in the number of addiction counsellors in Dublin and other cities. The Minister is working on some practical things and the round-table meeting he has organised tomorrow involving the CEOs of the various local authorities, who have a critical role to play in this, along with the NGOs and the support services, etc., is very welcome.

One thing we could do, and I suggest the Minister look into doing it, is to bring in legislation to cap rents because there is nothing in the free market to stop rents increasing. If rents go up 10%, that will affect another tranche of individuals, who will struggle to pay it. If they go up by 20%, it will hit yet another tranche of individuals and families who are not in a position to cope. We cannot have a situation where families are in hotel rooms. That is not acceptable. The free market is a great thing in some ways, but we need some sort of legislative cap on rents. We must also ensure that when people find themselves in a situation where their rents are increased, support services are there to advise them, whether it is a contact in local authorities to advise them how to deal with or negotiate with their landlords, or what their rights are, or perhaps the PRTB could facilitate advising and helping individuals who might not be able to advocate for themselves, to equip and assist them in advocating.

It is a desperate crisis and coming up to Christmas, the last thing we want to be talking about in this House is homelessness. Unfortunately, we will never eliminate it, but we must try to get it under control. Homelessness is a factor in most world cities. I would love to know where best practice is, and if there is a best practice in terms of dealing with it. The only way we can deal with it is by ensuring we put as many resources as possible into areas like addiction - in terms of drugs, alcoholism, and so on.

We had a very successful rural resettlement programme in the 1980s and early 1990s, where the depopulation of rural Ireland facilitated bringing families out of Dublin and settling them in villages. That was very successful in parts of north Clare, which the Minister would know of, in places like Moy and Mullagh in County Clare, where families are settled and have integrated completely with the community. I would suggest that where there are ghost estates that are under the control of NAMA, if it were possible to make those estates homes, or at least acceptable accommodation, and to offer people on the social housing lists in Dublin, for example, the opportunity to move to a rural environment, one would be surprised by the number of people on the social housing list in Dublin who would relish the opportunity to move to a rural area. It would also help with school numbers and so on.

We must think outside the box. In fairness to this Minister, he has been in office for 16 or 17 weeks and he has already had to deal with a significant water difficulty and this homeless situation. He is getting down and playing ground hurling to resolve it, because he knows that everyone deserves to have a roof over their head. I wish him well in that endeavour and we are only too happy to do anything we can in the Seanad in terms of fomenting debate and coming up with ideas and suggestions.