Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)
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Question 469: To ask the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government the number of homeless persons in Dublin in 2008, 2009, 2010 and to date in 2011; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [22169/11]

Willie Penrose (Longford-Westmeath, Labour)
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A statutory assessment of housing need is carried out every three years by all housing authorities. Data for the 2011 Assessment of Housing Need are currently being compiled by the Housing Agency and will be published as soon as possible. The last assessment took place in 2008 and indicated that there were 1,394 homeless households on local authority waiting lists, of which 709 were in the Dublin region. A breakdown of this figure by household on a local authority basis is available on my Department's website at www.environ.ie.

However, the Counted In survey, which is a special purpose count of people using homeless services carried out in Dublin every three years since 1999, has been generally considered to provide the most robust indicator as it surveyed the number of homeless persons in homeless hostels, shelters, sleeping rough, etc, over a particular week, irrespective of whether they have made application to the housing authority.

The results of the last Counted In survey in 2008 reported a total of 1,436 homeless households in Dublin, compared with 1,361 in 2005. A further 708 households were recorded as residing in long-term or transitional accommodation. However, not all of these would be regarded as homeless, particularly where, for example, households were resident in suitable accommodation that would be likely to provide their most appropriate home in the long-term, or where they had begun to make a transition out of homelessness.

The Pathway Accommodation & Support System (PASS) is an accommodation management and inter-agency service user support system which is being developed in accordance with priority actions of the implementation plan set out under national homeless strategy 2008-2013 The Way Home. The system commenced in the Dublin Region in January 2011 and is currently in use by almost all service providers of homeless accommodation and outreach supports in the Dublin region. Work is still ongoing to ensure consistency of use and accurate information recording by the service providers, as well as the elimination of duplicate records, validation of data etc. The PASS system will provide good quality timely data on homelessness which is essential in ensuring an evidence base for all homeless services. I understand that validated data on the number of persons recorded as homeless on the PASS system in the Dublin region will be available in September 2011.