“Homelessness is too high in Ireland and we have to work every day to do better and do more,” Tánaiste Simon Harris has said.
He made the admission after fresh criticism on how homelessness is affecting children in emergency accommodation and news coverage about rough sleepers in Dublin.
On Tuesday, Nuala Ward, a senior official at the office of the Ombudsman for Children, told the Oireachtas housing committee that child homelessness is a “national shame” with a “devastating impact” on the children involved.
Of the 15,580 homeless people living in emergency accommodation in April, 4,775 were children.
Separately, The Irish Times reported on how up to a dozen rough sleepers are living in a makeshift camp surrounded by rubbish and rats under the M50 road.
Mr Harris admitted that homelessness is “too high”, while also defending the record of the Government in its attempts to resolve the crisis.
He said the key to tackling the homelessness issue is the “supply of a whole variety of homes, including social homes”.
He said the Government is working on making it easier for local authorities to get through the approval process for new social homes more quickly.
The Fine Gael leader also said: “Last year, we did see the highest number of social homes allocated than any year since the 1970s, so that’s part of the record of my party and of Fianna Fáil in Government, actually delivering more social homes last year than any time in my lifetime.”
He said the Government’s “North Star” is to “get to 300,000 homes over the next five years, and I believe that’s what success will look like”.
Mr Harris also said: “I don’t in any way, any way, underestimate the scale of the housing crisis. It is a housing emergency.
“It’s a very real and acute emergency for people, particularly families, challenged in relation to their housing today, and that’s why we need to break down every silo that exists in the State.
“Housing can’t just be an emergency for the Minister for Housing, the Department of Housing or people in need of housing.
“It has to be an emergency for every part of the State” including the chief executives of local authorities and utilities such as Uisce Éireann and the ESB and “every county councillor who needs to realise their job isn’t to object to houses, but build houses”.
Mr Harris was speaking as he accompanied Minister for Housing James Browne to officially open 133 new cost-rental homes delivered by South Dublin County Council in Tallaght.
Mr Browne, a Fianna Fáil TD, said homelessness was “foremost” in his mind when he became Minister earlier this year and the first thing he did was meet homelessness organisations and visit emergency accommodation.
He said higher rents cause higher homelessness internationally, and that by increasing supply “we get rents down and we’ll also help to get homelessness down”.
He said the extension of Rent Pressure Zones and plans to improve security of tenure for tenants “will help to prevent people going into homelessness as well.”
Mr Browne said: “40 per cent of everybody going into homelessness is as a result of a notice to quit” and when the new legislation comes in people will have security of tenure.
While homeless numbers reached a new record high in April Mr Browne also said there is “record prevention” of homelessness as well and people are being exited from homelessness as quickly as possible.
