Mr. Farrell: I said homelessness in most cases results from alcohol abuse.
Dr. Henry:
The Senator said 80% and the surveys prove that is not the case. I am furious that he should come into the House without having researched the matter properly. The Minister will be aware that psychiatric illness is one of the most serious causes of homelessness. Between 30% and 40% of homeless people suffer from psychiatric illness. Some 15 years ago, a policy was introduced to bring people out of psychiatric institutions into the community. The Senator may nod his head but he did not mention this fact.Mr. Farrell: I had intended to refer to mental illness but time constraints prevented me from doing so.
Dr. Henry:
It was not high on the Senator's list. These people were supposed to receive care in the community but that is not happening. Without any specific training, the Simon Community, Sr. Stan in Focus Ireland and others are trying to help these people who need, but are not receiving, psychiatric help.While I understand the Senator's concern about alcohol abuse and agree that the recent RTE programme was terrifying, we cannot paint sick people as drunks lying on the street when they are not drunks and are homeless because of our failures. A very high number of homeless people are psychiatrically ill. The Minister of State, Deputy Moffatt, will be aware of this because he will have read the reports. We are trying to appoint consultants to see how we can deal with homeless people with psychiatric illness. Once these people are on the streets, they do not take their medication and are not in touch with social workers.
We - and I am part of the system - created a further problem through the introduction of sectorisation in the psychiatric services. If as I walk up Baggot Street I meet someone who is obviously seriously psychiatrically ill, I cannot get them into a hospital in the city if they are from Blanchardstown or some other area of Dublin. They must go to their local hospitals. This is a serious problem which must be addressed.
I walk to work along the canal where I see nests of people, many of whom are psychiatrically ill, sleeping under pink blankets and cardboard. During the day, they transfer themselves to a position outside the TSB at the corner of Baggot Street. I implore the Minister to give priority to the problem of homeless people with psychiatric illness. In the past, there were wards in St. Brendan's, where I completed part of my training, for people with no fixed abode.
If people are not on the streets, they are in prison. Surveys reveal that almost 30% of prisoners are described as psychiatrically ill, with 10% being described as seriously psychiatrically ill. These are scientific surveys. People commit minor offences when they are out on the streets but, rather than putting them into a hospital, they are sent to prison. The Minister is well aware of the concerns about prison psychiatric services. The Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform was in the House recently and agreed with me that this was a serious issue and that psychiatrically ill people were ending up in prison, having committed minor offences.
This is an international problem. People were supposed to be cared for in the community on coming out of psychiatric hospitals but nobody realised how expensive and difficult it would be to achieve that. It is the health service which should deal with these patients, not these organisations which are not in a position to deal with them. The hostels which were spoken of in the budget cannot be built too soon as it is very hard to deal with people such as this in an ordinary hostel setting as they are ill, are difficult to deal with and are not taking their medication. I quite understand the trouble they must be. Also, people who get out of prison have absolutely nowhere to go.
I am sorry for getting so cross about this matter, but it breaks my heart to see ill people denigrated as drunks and, worse still, those trying to deal with them described as fools. They are not fools - Sr. Stan is unbelievable as are those who run the Simon Community, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and the organisations which are working terribly hard and doing very well. Of course, drink is a serious problem. Between 20% and 30% of homeless people are on either drink or drugs or both and I trip over them as I go home. However, most people are homeless because of a life crisis such as losing a job - as Senator Ridge said, rented accommodation is extraordinarily expensive - the breakdown of marriage or involvement in a court case.
Nobody really knows the number of women who are sleeping rough as they have to make themselves far less obvious. However, there are many homeless women. The Minister of State, Deputy Hanafin, and I have frequently spoken about the problem of children. She said she becomes quite cross when they are described not as being homeless but out of home, as if there was somewhere they could go if they were so minded. We must ask why such children have left home. We see all sorts of unfortunate cases of abuse and neglect coming before the courts, which must be a significant factor.
Could the Government try to continue the community employment schemes with groups such as the Simon Community, Focus Point, the Combat Poverty Agency and the Society of St. Vincent de Paul? Frequently those employed are from the community and are very good at getting back to the community. The National Training Fund Bill has been passed by the House and FÁS has brought people from a very low ebb to being in full employment. It is only through this gradual help to improve people that we can do something about the problem.
We must try to get homeless people into some sort of home. We have many young people on the streets. I spoke to one young person near Baggot Street Hospital who was sitting on the ground on blankets. When I asked him what he was doing on the street he said he had a fight with his father and that his mother was on holiday until the end of the month. How long would he be on the streets before he was in real trouble? We urgently need short-term emergency accommodation and try to ensure young and old, children and women are not put in the same accommodation. For example, that young boy about whom I spoke should not be put in accommodation with the winos about whom Senator Farrell spoke; to do so would not be to his betterment.
I apologise to Senator Farrell for getting so cross, but I know very sad cases and the surveys back up what I say.
Labhrás Ó Murchú: Senator Costello has raised this matter many times on the Order of Business and has shown a deep concern for the homeless. I also compliment Senator Farrell who asked for the debate and who has spoken in a sincere way, as has Senator Ridge. Some days ago on the Order of Business I raised homelessness in Ireland and the high incidence of homelessness among the Irish in Britain. In London it is estimated that up to 40% of those who are homeless are of Irish extraction.
I was very impressed by the Minister's contribution for two reasons. First, there was an underlying humanity in what he said and he clearly made the point that it was not acceptable to have even one homeless person. At the same time he outlined a long-term strategy and interim measures which are particularly important.
This matter should be entirely removed from the political arena as it is too important and serious. We all feel very deeply about it. There is nothing more traumatic than to walk along a street and see a person sleeping rough, with those going home from parties stepping over them. We should remember that in the past if a person saw someone lying in the street for whatever reason, be it health or drink, they would stop, lift them up and help them. That was the culture and philosophy in Ireland years ago. This has changed and the reasons for the change must be examined as no matter what is done by Government or local authorities the problem will not be solved unless the reasons for homelessness are identified and community attitudes are changed.
In fairness I think Senator Henry misrepresented what was said by Senator Farrell. He was not pointing a finger at the helpless person but at society which accepts the abuse of alcohol and at those who advertise alcohol to the point of abuse. It is important that this be put on the record.
Unless we do something about the exceptionally serious and growing problem we will always regard it as a blight on our success and on our nation. On reviewing the unusually good budget this year, which spread the wealth and helped the less fortunate, it struck me that such measures are diminished when we think of those who are suffering as a result of homelessness. We should examine the reasons for homelessness, one of which is alcohol. The psychiatric issues raised by Senator Henry are also definitely relevant. Another issue is the breakdown in the cohesiveness of family life. In the past there was a cohesion in families whereby people looked out for each other, and not just in the immediate family.
If one looks at the changing attitudes in America over the past 20 years one will see a huge peer pressure on young people to leave the family home before they are even capable of looking after themselves. I am not taking from the economic reasons or social pressures, but the forcing of young people through peer pressure to leave the family home is an important factor. They feel they are independent and can look after themselves, but they are very vulnerable at that age and when a problem comes their way they are unable to deal with it and are too independent to return to their family. Families should endeavour to look out for such problems as it is a basic factor.
Another reason is if people have no purpose in life, and there are many such people. Recently both Fine Gael and the Labour Party have been making a point about the quality of life. We could all make that point. A wage packet does not guarantee security, contentment, happiness, concern for others. The wheel has come full circle. We are realising what we have lost - our spirituality. When religious communities looked after the homeless we had little difficulty. We have seen what happened to the Mercy order. I am not saying there were not exceptional cases. However, the whole order is tarred with the same brush, as are the Christian Brothers and the clergy, yet 99.9% of them took over responsibilities we should have had. They are not here today and the problems are being thrown out on the streets where they were never thrown before. Natural community spirit is disappearing because the city is growing at such a fast rate. The sense of community is disappearing in smaller towns also. There are few community and voluntary bodies or religious groups, no sense of understanding within society that affluence sometimes brings isolation from other people.
All of those issues need to be looked when making policy. That is why I said there was humanity in what the Minister said today. We need partnership and a return to the ideals we had in the past. We welcome affluence, but we must recognise that if we do not tackle the source of the problem of homelessness, everything else we do will be but a cosmetic exercise and the problems will grow. We should bear in mind also that the person lying on the street is totally helpless, having reached that stage, and not every section of officialdom will reach him or her. Individual concern definitely will.
I do not want to take up any more time because I want to allow Senator Costello to enter the debate as he has spoken on this subject many times. I make a final appeal to take this issue out of the political arena. Officialdom and money will not solve the problem if we do not recognise that we are losing important values. We must recognise that tackling this problem requires partnership. I compliment the voluntary bodies, the Simon Community and others who, over the years, fulfilled a role that we were either unable or unprepared to fill.
Mr. Costello: I thank Senator Labhrás Ó Murchú for giving me some of his time. I can hardly improve on what he said.
This is about quality of life, social cohesion, community values, the standards of latter days. It is about a new society, the tiger economy which seems to have little respect for the person, the family, the community, and seems to breed individualism, self interest, greed and lack of caring in a community. We are at a threshold, and there is more affluence in our society than kindness and caring.
It is terrible to see the statistics day after day, the information from the Simon Community today about the doubling of the number of people sleeping rough in the past three years and, in today's newspapers, the information that an inner city day centre notes the numbers availing of the service it provides to homeless people have doubled in the past 12 months. The statistics are certainly very stark. According to the ESRI report, 4,000 people are known to be homeless in the city of Dublin alone, and there are probably many more because it is very difficult to do a count of the homeless. In excess of 1,200 of those are young people and approximately 100 young people are sleeping rough every night. The number of people sleeping rough in Dublin is two thirds of the number sleeping rough in London, a city with a population ten times the size of Dublin, and approximately 40% of the homeless in London are Irish-born, as Senator Ó Murchú said. The situation is dire.
The obvious question is what to do about it. Many of the homeless people who come to me in my clinics looking for accommodation have been evicted. They have been told to quit or have been evicted by landlords who do not want a particular type of clientele. Such people are the most vulnerable of all. Landlords do not want anybody who is a drug addict, who has an alcohol problem, who is a single parent, and they do not want families. They want single people who are employed, who have a good income, who will give them no trouble and who will be able to pay the current exorbitant rents. The problem is equally bad in shelters and hostels which have a policy of not allowing in anybody who might have a drug abuse or alcohol problem. It is these people, who are particularly ill and vulnerable, who are sleeping rough. That is a major issue we must face.
As Senator Ó Murchú said, the religious orders are now depleted and the service that was provided by them has been reduced enormously. A very worrying aspect is the number of teenagers who, for one reason or another - rows and difficulties in the home - are out on the street fending for themselves. Drugs are a major aspect and this ties in with a survey carried out in the north inner city last week which showed that of 100 teenagers interviewed 40% were abusing illegal drugs, 80% were abusing alcohol, and all were well under the age of 18. The problems have been brought about partly by affluence and partly as a result of changes in society and the breakdown of social ties.
Accommodation is the major key to what can be done. I am not satisfied with an extra £20 million in capital funding over a five-year period. That is not nearly good enough. That is a national figure of between £4 million and £5 million per annum and it will not deal with the crisis we are facing. We need to establish a task force on homelessness. We need to give to a single body the authority to deal with the issue. We should no longer have both health boards and local authorities involved, but one or the other. The local authority, as the housing authority, should deal with homelessness. However, there should be a separate area in the local authority that would deal exclusively with the matter as part of a task force on homelessness.
We must also introduce new landlord and tenant legislation because the incredible situation here is that somebody must be in situ for 20 years before they acquire any rights as a tenant, no matter how good a tenant they are. The result is that landlords, seeing neighbouring landlords doubling their income, often serve their tenants with notice to quit, even if they are good tenants, because the tenants cannot meet the demand for an increase in the rent. This is particularly true of the elderly. An increasing number of elderly people, single people, couples and families are being forced out of what was reasonable rented accommodation because prices have gone through the roof. It is these people who are now on the local authority housing list, and that is the cause of the crisis whereby it will be two or three years before anybody on Dublin Corporation's homeless list can expect any accommodation. That is true of families as well as elderly people, and young people do not have a hope of getting accommodation. A single young man or woman will not be housed by any of the State services because the demand from single parents and couples with families is so great.
1 o'clock
At Christmas time it is important that we register our concern and I echo the last point made by Senator Ó Murchú that we should not play politics with this issue. As the Minister said, if only one person was homeless, we should be concerned about it. We must urgently put together a decent response that would provide the funding and the mechanism to deal with the problem of homelessness.
Mr. Farrell: We could have gone home today without having talked about the problem of homelessness. If I have stirred up opinions and got people talking, and if I have annoyed some people, I have done a good job coming up to Christmas. We got people talking about the serious issue of people living on the streets. Today we have shown that we are serious about addressing the causes of homelessness. I thank you, a Leas-Chathaoirligh, for giving us the opportunity to discuss this important subject, and I thank the Minister of State for coming into the House.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach: Your comments are always well intentioned, Senator. When is it proposed to sit again?
Mr. T. Fitzgerald: I want to record my sincere thanks to the Cathaoirleach, the Leas-Chathaoirleach, the Clerk and Assistant Clerk of the Seanad, the staff, the media, the ushers and the Senators on both sides of the House. It has been an historic year and I wish everyone a very happy Christmas. The House will adjourn sine die.
