Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)
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Question 21: To ask the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government the progress made in ending long-term homelessness and in the introduction of a housing first approach to tackling the homeless crisis. [37560/11]

Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)
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The Programme for Government commits to reviewing and updating the current homeless strategy, to adopting a 'housing first/housing led' approach to homelessness and to ensuring more effective prevention strategies. Work now underway on updating the strategy will be concluded this year. There is no single solution to increasing the level of social housing supply for the homeless, and maximising delivery will require flexible and diverse approaches.

The initial emphasis will necessarily be on the Dublin region, where the numbers are most acute, by moving away from the current over reliance on emergency accommodation provision to a more permanent accommodation solution and to be achieved through a number of measures including: directly linking the provision of funding with specific targets and outcomes; making better use of the existing available accommodation units in the local authorities and in the voluntary sector; additional social housing provision through acquisitions and remedial works/upgrading of vacant local authority housing stock and a leasing programme; engagement with NAMA to pursue options for securing properties without significant state funding; targeted use of the Rental Accommodation Scheme (RAS); an enhanced role for the private rental sector; better co-ordination with the voluntary and cooperative housing sector; and the establishment of Homeless Action Teams across all regions.