Ken O'Flynn: Demands Action on Older People Homelessness

First of all, Tánaiste, I'm sure you'll join with me by offering your sympathies and the sympathies of the government on the passing of Sister Colette Hickey, passing at the age of 108 years of age, founder of Edell House Cork and the first winner and recipient of the 1993 Cork Person of the Year Award for her tremendous work that she did for our city. Tánaiste, this week we have reports in the press of 265 people aged 65 or older living in emergency accommodation, 146 of them living in Dublin alone. These are men and women that should be well settled into their retirements, not sleeping in hostels and not sleeping in hubs. And it isn't this long ago that I brought up in this house and I mentioned about my own case in my own constituency in Mallow where we have a lady approaching 80 years of age who has been placed into homeless accommodation far from her network, far from her neighbours and far from everybody that she associated with in through her lifetime. Unfortunately that's not an isolated case, this is just one of the human faces of the figures that I've given this house. And this government, it's not the first warning that this government has received. Back in January, Simon Community Ireland, working with Simon Galway, the Simon Community Galway, published a report on homelessness in later life. It found that old age homelessness had doubled in the past five years. It found that the assumption of older people that they own their own homes and were in secure tenancy was no longer a reflection of the reality of the state. More often it struck that many of these people are in private rented accommodations with rapid rents that are rising and watching their own security that they spent a lifetime building disappear in front of their eyes. Uachtarán Connolly herself attended the launch of that report in Galway. She said it shines a light, a spotlight, on the growing number of older people experiencing homelessness and particular attention should be given to the recommendations. Now Tánaiste, when the President of Ireland says that this needs to be looked at, surely the government and this house should pay attention to that. The report sets out six clear costings in their policy recommendations. Stronger national leadership, better legal protections, increasing resources for homeless services, and a targeted strategy for the expanding age-friendly housing. In fairness to them, Tánaiste, that's not a radical ask. They are basics and achievable steps by any government, I would have assumed. The report's authors themselves have said that Ireland has a window of opportunity to act before it becomes entrenched. That's five months have passed since that launch and the numbers have not improved, Tánaiste, as I've laid out. The Lady in Mallow is not the only one in homeless services living in a homeless hub at the moment. This has not been treated as a priority by your government because we seem to have a problem in this state where we look at elderly people and we think it's someone else's problem. So I'm asking you directly, Tánaiste, have the six recommendations in that report, how many have the government adopted? Will they publish a timeline? Is your Minister for Housing delivering on them or has the report been welcomed by you publicly but shelved privately? Go raibh maith agat. Thank you very much Deputy O'Flynn. I join with you in extending my sympathy to the friends, family and fellow sisters of Sister Colette Hickey. What an incredible age and indeed an incredible life of service and of impact to people, most particularly in Cork and Ar aiste go raibh anam díolais. Thank you for extending your sympathy to her in the House today. I also thank you for raising this issue and this is a serious issue. I don't dispute that. One of the reasons we decided that for the very first time the Minister for Older People should be based between both the Department of Health and the Department of Housing is that recognition that we can't just have conversations about older people from a policy perspective in the Department of Health but we also need to be having conversations about health, well-being in the context of housing as well and Minister O'Donnell is very committed to this agenda and working extraordinarily hard in this. The last census, sorry the census, the last one compared with the previous one did show the scale of the challenger and you're right to highlight the number of people over the age of 65 renting had increased by a very significant amount. So there is a real policy issue here of that I don't doubt and that's why we will be producing this year a specific housing plan for older people and to give you a flavour of some of the issues that we believe need to be addressed as part of that. I think right-sizing is an important issue and indeed in the Department of Finance now we've put in place with the Central Bank a change to the bridging finance rules in terms of access to mortgages which I think is important in terms of an older person who needs to downsize or right-size for their own quality of life, their own health, wants to live in their own community. Being able to not be prohibited by rigid mortgage rules I think is a positive development. It's why some of the tenancy protections I think are important, being able to provide six-year tenancies for people rather than this uncertainty that we've had in our country before but it's why we also need to work and in the new plan we will be specifically with older people's social housing targets for every local authority and I don't say this to be critical of Cork and in fact I say it as a positive. I mean a city like Cork could really help lead the way here by becoming a local authority that decides to set targets and there's nothing to stop any local authority doing this today but we'll be mandating it as part of our plan to set every local authority set targets in terms of the number of older people's homes that they will deliver each year. We've all seen this, any of us have been involved in public life for a while, we've seen how this used to happen in the past where small clusters or states of homes used to be developed for people, older people and or people with a disability. Largely and again not being critical of anyone, that kind of stopped for a while. We need to really really revamp and reboot that as well. We need better data collection processes and older people as well. We need our local authorities to enhance delivery through improved site identification, working closer with the AHBs as well and we do need to and will recognise in the plan the increasing number of older people renting in the private rented sector and examine those affordability challenges for older people approaching retirement in the sector and how we as a government need to help address those challenges as well. So we will be back this year, as soon as possible this year, with our housing plan for older people and we'll encompass these issues in that. Thank you Tanaiste and I'm looking forward to meeting Valerie O'Sullivan, our city CE and informing her that she will make monies available for older housing plans for older people. Tanaiste there's another elephant in the room that I want to make, bring out to aware to the government and that is people that have lost their houses back in the 2008-2009 period. People that are now in rented accommodation, that are now back on their feet, some of them have restarted businesses, some of them have started working, are back working but they're renting in high accommodation. But they're rapidly approaching 65 now, a number of these people and I predict that there's going to be a tremendous increase in people approaching local authorities throughout the country saying I no longer can afford the 2,300 euro rent, I need to be on a local authority housing list and I predict that that is going to be a huge problem facing this country and I don't think we're accommodating for it and I don't think we're thinking about that or planning for it. And Tanaiste the one thing I would say to you, because losing your home when you're 70s is not just a housing problem, it's a health problem, it's a mobility problem, it's a routine problem and it certainly loses your dignity when you lose your home at that age. Thank you. Well I actually agree largely with your analysis here and we are still seeing the scars of that financial crash where people who lost their home at a certain age in life are now ageing and yes we have to be prepared and we are working on this, one of the reasons we're doing this specific body of work led by Minister O'Donnell which will come to government shortly. We're also seeing alongside the reasons you've pointed out and this is largely a good thing for our society, a significant increase in life expectancy but also a change in our demographics. So we're expecting that the population aged over 85 will increase by over 140% in Ireland by 2040, so very very significant demographic turn. You know we are I think still one of the youngest populations in Europe but we're ageing and ageing fast as well. So we are very committed to acting in relation to this. I'd say in relation to the local authorities, we allocate a lot of money to local authorities. What I'd say and I say this respectfully, they need to start all of them being I suppose showing creativity in terms of the type of housing that they're delivering, homes for people with disabilities, homes for older people, you know social housing as a kind of umbrella term. We actually need to start looking at the types of social housing that are required and that mixed tenure and I'd be very happy to make Cork City Council on that at any time.