A SHOCKING 8,300 people are predicted to be homeless when the Government announces Budget 2018 on October 10.

After the deaths of four homeless people last week and with almost 3,000 children living in emergency accommodation, Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy has been urged to declare a state of emergency.

9 8,300 people are predicted to be homeless when the Government announces Budget 2018 on October 10 Credit: Alamy

9 Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy

The Attorney General yesterday told the Government there is no road block to using compulsory purchase orders to force the sale of the thousands of homes lying empty around the country.

The Housing Department has continued to release statements over the past few months acknowledging the situation is unacceptable and claiming the issue is a top priority and funding is not an obstacle.

The Irish Sun asked eight people who are at the forefront of the fight to end the crisis what the State needs to do to address the problem.

Here we present their range of solutions from tax cuts and benefits increases, to bringing back bedsits and building our way out of the problem.

Mary Rose Burke - CEO of Dublin Chamber of Commerce

IT sounds overly-simplistic, but the ­solution to solving Ireland’s accommodation crisis is to build more houses and apartments.

The availability and affordability of housing are the biggest issues facing businesses and workers in Dublin.

9 Mary Rose Burke

This has been the case for some time. Urgent action is now required.

We’d like to see powers over planning and development, infrastructure investment, and housing delivery in the Dublin region to be centralised to a single body.

“This body would have a mandate which includes the creation of a long-term plan for the development of the whole Dublin region and to co-ordinate the activities of various state agencies to ensure implementation.

It is vital that we learn from the mistakes of the past decade and ensure that we never find ourselves, as a country, in this position again.

“Investment in infrastructure is not a tap that can be turned off and on — a successful Ireland is dependent on proper long-term planning and consistent levels of investment.”



Tom Parlon -Director General of the Construction Industry Fed

EVERYONE agrees the Government needs to begin building houses again. This means the State would license the building of essential housing where most needed.

Generally, there are not enough houses being built to meet the needs of Ireland’s growing population and economy.

This is a particular problem when it comes to social and affordable housing as neither the Government nor industry can deliver these types of homes in the current environment.

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At the moment, builders cannot secure finance for the development of social and affordable homes so they can’t build these types of houses in ­sufficient numbers.

The Government has committed to providing over 45,000 such homes by 2021 so they need to consider innovative ways to provide finance or reduce construction costs.

To reduce construction costs, the Government must reduce the amount of tax on each new unit built.

The single largest expense in building a house is tax. Roughly 45 per cent of the cost of a new home is spent on tax.



Fintan McNamara - Residential Landlords Association of Ireland

BUDGET accommodation, or traditionally bedsits, have a bad name because in the past some of them were not fit for purpose.

They were old and regulations weren’t being complied with by landlords.

9 Fintan McNamara of the Residential Landlords Association

But there are about 1,500 or more bedsits where it is very difficult to comply one hundred per cent with the regulations, in that you have to have a bathroom en suite or self-contained.

Where you have to share a bathroom with one or two other people the rent is an awful lot lower, but that is not allowable to be rented out.

They say it’s substandard but there are units that comply with fire safety, food storage and all the other facilities and they say just because you have to share a bathroom with one or two other people it is substandard.

In my view, that defies logic. You will notice in Dublin and rural areas that there are houses that are boarded up and falling into disrepair.

There should be an advertising campaign asking owners to come to the local authority with a view to being incentivised to bring these homes back into play.



Gary Gannon - Social Democrats Councillor

A REPUBLIC founded upon the principles that all of its children would be ‘cherished equally’ cannot stand by while over 3,000 of those very same children now live in a state of homelessness.

As a state, we must adopt a wartime footing to truly confront this emergency.

9 Gary Gannon believes a Housing Delivery Agency is 'urgently needed'

As a starting point, a dedicated Housing Delivery Agency is urgently needed to step up the pace of home building.

Eoghan Murphy, as Minister for Housing, assures us that homelessness is a top priority, and yet a mere 161 social housing units were built in the first nine months of last year.

A new Housing Delivery Agency would be charged with contracting builders and activating publicly-controlled land banks in different local authorities. This kind of dedicated agency could achieve economies of scale, reducing construction costs.

The solutions are by no means radical: build more social and public housing, provide rent certainty to tenants, and bring into life the vacant and unused properties we have scattered throughout the State.



June Tinsley - Head of Advocacy at Barnardos

EVERY day in homelessness is a day too long, and damaging to children. Childhoods are being destroyed.

The Government can do more to stem the flow of families becoming homeless.

9 'Childhoods are being destroyed' Credit: Getty - Contributor

For low-income families the rates of rent supplement and housing assistance ­payments are too low.

These support payments need to be reviewed to ensure they are in line with market rents.

The Government missed its own commitment that by mid-2017 hotels would only be used to house families in very limited circumstances. Unfortunately many children remain stuck in hotels.

Families must be moved out of hotel accommodation and into more stable and appropriate accommodation.

The new family hubs cannot be seen as a long-term solution.

The Government’s reliance on the private rental market to fulfil the need for social housing units is short-sighted and unsustainable.

Prioritising the construction of social housing is paramount. Introducing a vacant land or property tax could help free up space or accommodation to be used for social housing.



Ronan Lyons - Assistant Professor of Economics, Trinity College Dublin

THE key barrier to preventing homelessness — in particular the phenomenon of homeless families — is the lack of a functioning social housing system.

There are a number of core features of a good social housing system.

9 Ronan Lyons

One is that it should be counter-cyclical, in other words social housing increases when times are bad, and falls back when times are good.

The second is that it should be debt-financed. Taxpayer money set aside for social housing should be used as ­collateral to borrow more money to build homes.

And lastly, the money spent on providing new accommodation needs be connected up to the subsidies given to those in social housing.

Rather than a fixed pot of rent supplement or a set ‘council rent’, the subsidy given to those in need of social housing should vary with their income.”



John Mark McCafferty - CEO of Threshold

THRESHOLD is calling on the Government to create an affordable and suitable supply of rental accommodation across the country through the following.

A deposit protection scheme, with a maximum limit of one month’s rent by law.

9 A homeless man on the Halfpenny Bridge in Dublin Credit: News Group Newspapers Ltd

A secure funding framework for the delivery of housing advice and assistance.

Increases in housing assistance payment and rent supplement limits.

Ensuring councils have the resources to inspect private rented accommodation.

NCT-type certification system for rented housing.

Tax reforms to sustain small-scale landlords with the aim of increasing supply.

A cost rental system of social and affordable accommodation.

The introduction of a mandatory rent register.



Niamh Randall - Head of Policy at The Simon Community

PEOPLE experiencing homelessness and housing instability must be a top priority for this Government.

We need to keep people in the homes they have and ­support those trapped in emergency accommodation to move into homes of their own.

9 Niamh Randall

The long-term solution is to build affordable housing. Budget 2018 must increase direct capital expenditure funding to €1billion per annum to deliver 10,000 homes per annum.

We need to fix other aspects of our broken housing system. There are nearly 200,000 empty homes around the country. Homeowners must be incentivised to sell, rent, or lease these back to the State.

For those who don’t, there should be a Vacant Property Tax for homes empty over 12 months. All rents should also be index linked to something like the Consumer Price Index.