Tánaiste heckled at Dublin homelessness conference

Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton was heckled and interrupted as she spoke during a conference in Dublin today on homelessness.

There were angry responses from some of the audience at the Impact-organised conference during a question-and-answer session with Ms Burton.

An initial angry response was provoked when she was asked by Independent Dublin city councillor Ruairí McGinley about rent supplement, and responded that the reason the numbers of people on rent supplement was going down was because of lot of families and individuals were going back to work.

A number of people interrupted shouting that’s not true and “that’s bulls***”. One delegate, who described himself as a founding member of Impact, shouted at the Minister, “stop the evictions or we will”. Repeatedly interrupting, he was later escorted from the room.

Ms Burton acknowledged the questions put from the floor were important and said she had no issue with this. She added she wanted to engage in an open debate on a crucial issue with delegates who included a number of public representatives.

She highlighted the difficulties with some of the very large local authority estates that have been built and said smaller estates with stronger social supports would be more appropriate.

Ms Burton said rent supplement morphed in the 2000s into being a permanent housing solution when it was meant originally as a supplement for somebody who lost their job and was renting privately. It was meant to tithe them over.

The rent supplement budget for 2014 is €344 million for 77,000 people. The Minister said the Government was starting to build social housing in a new way with local authorities. She said it was a mistake to board up local authority houses as they were vacated, and that the authorities were being funded extensively to restore them.

One homeless man, Peter McDonagh, said he had been in that situation for four years and had not moved on from emergency accommodation. He said nothing was being done to address the problem of homelessness for single people.

Ms Burton said the aim was to end such homelessness by 2016. “So two more years of homelessness,” he said. When the Minister said they were starting on the issue now and were putting boarded-up homes back into use, he replied the “homeless should just take them over themselves”.

Speaking afterwards, Mr McDonagh said he became homeless “through a dodgy landlord”, whom he said kicked him out and kept his deposit. He said he had had mental health issues and found it harder to get work once he was made homeless.

Mr McDonagh said he was an activist with the Socialist Workers’ Party and People Before Profit. Nobody showed any respect to people who were homeless, he added.

Tamara Kearns, a member of Housing Action Group, who said she, her husband, daughter aged 6 and son aged 2 were homeless from last October until July of this year, condemned the treatment she said she received from Dublin City Council's homeless service.

She said they were made to feel “very small”, and when they were provided with temporary accommodation in an apartment, people had entered their home when they were absent. She also claimed council workers had opened her post.

Ms Kearns criticised proposals from the Dublin Regional Housing Executive for low-cost housing units. The agency is working with an agency in Amsterdam which recycles shipping containers into student accommodation, with proper rooms and appropriate facilities.

Ms Kearns said such housing would become permanent, and that the authorities should build proper homes.

Dr Daithí Downey, deputy head of the executive, defended the proposal and said the local authority was obliged to build quality standard accommodation. He said this accommodation would be of a 30- to 40-year cycle, was made of lower cost materials, but would be of a quality standard.

Dr Downey said the homelessness crisis was “on the cusp” and they should not “push out the good while waiting for the perfect”.

He said the executive was developing proposals for low-cost housing which he insisted was not “pre-fab” buildings.

He added that €1.4 million was spent on hotel accommodation last year. “If this continues, Dublin would likely spend €4 million on hotels.” But he said the executive was committed to ensuring nobody would have to sleep rough.