The Government is to examine how local authorities are allocating social housing to people on waiting lists to ensure enough priority is being given to individuals and families who are homeless, Taoiseach Simon Harris has said.
More than 14,000 people are currently recorded as homeless in the State, including 4,400 children, according to latest Department of Housing figures published on Friday.
Speaking in Paris, Mr Harris said he was concerned that the numbers of people who were homeless continued to increase, despite an increase in the amount of new social housing being delivered. “We’re obviously seeing a very significant increase in housing supply, we’re seeing a very significant increase in social housing and yet we’re also seeing homeless figures rise,” he said.
The Fine Gael leader said preliminary work was under way to review how councils allocated State-provided social housing to people on waiting lists. “If we have people who have been homeless, if we have people who are homeless with children, what do we do to ensure, as the number of social homes increases and very significantly increases in Ireland, that we begin to make progress on the homeless figures as well,” he said.
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Mr Harris said there was a “peculiar situation” where the number of social homes being allocated was at the highest levels in decades, yet homelessness was still increasing. “Housing supply is very significantly increasing, 308 new homes going to construction every single working day, and yet ... the homeless figures are not going in the direction we want them to,” he said.
How local authorities and councils are allocating housing needs “consideration”, he said. Mr Harris said he would be talking to local authorities about the matter and bringing it up at a Cabinet subcommittee on housing.
The aim was to ensure the increase in State provided housing had a “knock-on beneficial effect on our homeless numbers”, as he said it was “counter-intuitive to see the opposite happening”.
The increase in the numbers of asylum seekers coming to Ireland for protection also had an impact on housing. “We are seeing the two greatest societal challenges of our time, both housing and migration, somewhat intertwine,” Mr Harris said.
People who were granted asylum status moving out of direct provision accommodation centres was having “an impact” on other State services, he said.
Mr Harris, who travelled to Paris for the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, was speaking to reporters after a reception for the families of Team Ireland athletes in the Irish embassy in Paris on Saturday morning.
“100 years ago Ireland participated for the first time in the Olympics as an independent State, it was here in this city as well. On that occasion we sent a grand total of zero women athletes, in 1964 we sent one female athlete,” Mr Harris said. “Today out of a squad of 133 athletes, 66 are women, this is the first Olympic Games that has parity.”
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