Homeless Persons Supports
Dail Éireann — 2026-10-01
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James Browne (FF), Wexford

I will be absolutely clear; I do not want find any person in homelessness and one is one too many. In particular, it is not acceptable that young children and young people are ending up in emergency accommodation. We want them to exit as quickly as possible when it does happen. We are determined that this situation is not normalised. I do not want it to be considered acceptable by any member of this State or any State agency and we do not. We are challenging this situation. We have record preventions in terms of preventing people from entering homelessness. We also have a very high record of people exiting homelessness. We can get them back out of homelessness when it does happen as quickly as possible. When people are homeless, we provide emergency accommodation. It is important to understand these people are not sleeping on the streets. We have people sleeping on the streets and there is outreach. There is no need for anybody to be on the streets. People living on the streets are in very complex situations but we provide accommodation for everybody who needs it by way of emergency accommodation.
We are working relentlessly to address this situation and to tackle homelessness through prevention but also speeding up exits as quickly as possible. Driving on with the delivery of public housing is absolutely critical. That is why last year, we provided the highest number of social houses in the history of the State so we can exit people from emergency accommodation into social housing and to remove people from HAP, where the State is paying rent to private landlords, and into State-provided housing. That is why we have seen the number of HAP properties fall very significantly because of people exiting into permanent social housing solutions. There is no doubt in my mind about this. We want people to be able to grow up and grow old in secure and safe accommodation. Supporting people while they are in homelessness is a priority so they get as many supports as possible.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-10-01/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-10-05T01:01:00+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-10-01