Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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113. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government to ensure that a person (details supplied) is given suitable accommodation for a family, given that the unreliability of the self-accommodation system is incredibly difficult for the family who are moving around. [19934/16]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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My Department’s role in relation to homelessness involves the provision of a national framework of policy, legislation and funding to underpin the role of housing authorities in addressing homelessness at local level. In accordance with section 37(2) of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2009, statutory responsibility in relation to the provision of homeless services, including accommodation, rests with individual housing authorities.

The allocation of social housing support to qualified households, including determining the priority to be awarded to individual households, for medical or other circumstances, and determining the dwelling required to meet the household’s accommodation needs and requirements, is a matter for the housing authority concerned in accordance with the authority’s allocation scheme made under section 22 of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2009 and associated Social Housing Allocation Regulations 2011. An allocation scheme is solely a matter for the housing authority concerned to make and implement, as it is a reserved function of the housing authority. Furthermore, as Minister, I am precluded under housing legislation from exercising any power or control in relation to any case being dealt with by a housing authority, in this case Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council and, therefore, it would not be appropriate for me to intervene in this case.