94. Deputy Rory Hearne asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage if he will consider an emergency response to the growing number of people homeless in emergency accommodation and the very high estimates of those who are living in hidden homelessness; to outline the measures his Department is already taking; if he will declare the situation a crisis requiring an emergency and coordinated response; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [69315/26]

Last week, we saw record levels of homelessness in this country with 5,830 children in emergency accommodation. What emergency action is the Minister taking to immediately stem the flow of families and children into homelessness and the length of time people are spending in homelessness? I have not seen an emergency response from the Minister to this homelessness disaster. What will he do about it?

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.

The Minister knows the main cause of families and children being made homeless is eviction from the private rental sector. He says he has brought in measures that give the strongest tenancy protections we have seen but he knows also that those tenancy protections do not apply to all existing tenants. There are hundreds of thousands of tenants, including tens of thousands of families and children, who are as vulnerable to eviction as they were before the Minister brought in the new measures. We can look at the scale of evictions. There were 20,000 households evicted last year and over 11,000 evicted this year. In the past two and half years, 48,000 households have been issued with eviction notices. That is why we are seeing a massive rise in homelessness. What really frustrates me is the Minister has the power right now to implement an emergency ban on evictions that would at least stem the flow and stop the trauma of families and children being evicted. He showed what he can do when he wants to when he made the changes for vulture funds but when it comes to stopping families being made homeless, he should put in place a ban on evictions.

The Deputy knows full well he is giving people false hope. If you implement a ban on evictions, you kill supply straight away. The population is increasing. Where will you house everybody else who needs somewhere to live? We have now brought in the strongest tenancy protection measures in the history of this State. The Deputy left out that the notices to quit for people to leave their homes have fallen dramatically every month since April in the last period of time.

We want to see them fall even further. We also have to get the private investment to build those homes. Something the Deputy conveniently ignores is where that funding will come from to deliver the homes that we need.

Freezing the crisis into a permanent crisis is not the solution to solving the housing crisis. It gives some people short-term support but when you end it, you do not have any solutions. We are where we are, only even worse when a temporary eviction ban comes to an end. We have seen that. That was tried. We have seen exactly what happens in that - kill supply and the crisis is only worse when you come out the other side of it.

This week, I met three different people who are in homelessness in emergency accommodation, in particular, parents of children. Any length of time spent in emergency accommodation is deeply damaging. It is a trauma to a child. The trauma started even before they entered emergency accommodation, with the stress and trauma of being evicted from their home. It is having to take a child, having to take their teddy bears and their few little toys, put them into a bag, bring them and go into a place they do not know, a strange place with others in emergency accommodation. They hear their parents going to sleep at night crying because they are in the same room. They go to sleep at night crying. The Minister can talk about supply and the things that this will do but an eviction ban would at least stop those children in families from being made homeless in the coming months.

The Minister said it reduced, but it reduced to 4,000 households per quarter. We will see another 4,000 now. We are seeing hundreds of families and children being evicted every week. The Minister cannot turn away from that. That is a human catastrophe. Whatever about the supply, the Minister needs to put in place an emergency ban that will stop this.

I am deeply concerned about those young children who find themselves in that situation. That is why we provided record numbers of social housing last year and we will increase that delivery again this year. The State is putting in an extraordinary amount of funding directly to try to address all of the housing crisis so that we do not have that situation arising. What we are doing is making difficult decisions to ensure that we provide the supply, not only for people who are currently in accommodation but for those people who need accommodation who are living at home and need somewhere to live, and also those who are coming along in the next few years. Freezing the crisis into a permanent crisis, which is the Deputy's proposal, will not solve this.