John Paul Phelan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am taking this Commencement matter on behalf of the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy. It used to be called an Adjournment Debate in my day. Addressing homelessness is an absolute priority for the Government. Rebuilding Ireland, the Government's Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness, contains a wide range of measures which are being delivered. Ultimately, to fully address homelessness requires continued increases in the supply of new houses, particularly social housing. In this regard, the Government is determined to increase the stock of social housing by 50,000 homes by 2021, with over €6 billion ring-fenced to achieve this. More than 19,000 households had their social housing needs met in 2016. This increased significantly last year, when almost 26,000 such supports were delivered. The 2018 target is to deliver a similar level of tenancies via social housing supports. The level of funding available to local authorities has also increased to ensure they are in a position to provide effective supports and assistance to those who find themselves in need of emergency accommodation. In 2018, a budget of €116 million was provided by the Government for homelessness services. This was an increase of 18% on the 2017 allocation.

Despite the high levels of homelessness, results are being achieved. While the numbers remain very high, 2,080 families exited hotels last year and more than 4,700 individuals exited homeless emergency accommodation generally. We are also seeing progress in reducing the numbers of individuals rough-sleeping, with the latest count in April showing a large reduction since the previous count in November 2017. Over 200 permanent new beds were put in place before the end of 2017, with a further 40 beds introduced following Storm Emma earlier this year. The Pathway Accommodation & Support System, PASS, is a case management system which allows front-line staff in local authorities to register service users and provide them with the supports they require while accessing services. It also acts as the source of all statistical information that is used when reporting on homelessness, such as the Department's monthly homelessness report. This report delivers information on the number of persons accessing emergency accommodation in a given survey week, broken down by location, gender, age and accommodation type.

Data protection legislation provides robust protections to individuals, and the core principle of data minimisation ensures that an organisation can collect no information on a person beyond that which is required to carry out its explicit function. It would be inappropriate for a user of emergency accommodation to be asked to provide information concerning his or her sexual orientation. Accordingly, the Department does not collate data in this regard, but I am satisfied that the range of services in place to respond to homelessness can address the needs of all individuals, regardless of sexual orientation.

Furthermore, in response to Senator Warfield's points, I do not have information to contradict or to affirm his statement that around the world LGBTQI people are more prone to homelessness, although I think most of us, if we thought about the matter, would see that there is a logic to the argument he makes. They possibly are more prone to homelessness. Those data are not available in Ireland, and I really do not think it would be appropriate for local authorities to know who the gay people and the straight people are on their housing lists.

The Senator spoke about Focus Ireland. In possible answer to his question, while people have a right to their own privacy, I am sure there must be a method to ascertain a breakdown, in consultation with some of the agencies that deal with homeless people, and on the basis of anonymity, of the number of LGBTQI people on homelessness lists. While the official Government response, which I would defend to the hilt, is that local authorities should have no right to know someone's sexual orientation, I believe there is a method by which the Department might be able to fund some of the agencies that deal with homeless people to ascertain a breakdown of that figure while maintaining people's right to privacy.