Deputy Flaherty gave me notice of her intention to raise on the Adjournment the inadequate provision of accommodation for homeless young people in Dublin and nationally. Deputy Flaherty has some ten minutes to present her case and the Minister of State some five minutes to reply.
Adjournment Debate. - Accommodation for Homeless Young People.
I propose to divide my time with my colleague, Deputy Deenihan, who has an interest in this also.
Is that satisfactory?
It is satisfactory.
I am glad to have the opportunity of raising this very important issue. I have always had an interest in the child care provisions we have in this State. In particular, since January of this year when a critical situation emerged in parts of my constituency, in Ballymun in particular, with problems of accommodating large numbers of homeless young people who were turning up at the door of Fr. McVerry's hostel, I have been following it even more closely. In that time — it is only a few months — I have built up quite a substantial file.
Week after week we have had cases such as this of centres being forced to turn away homeless boys. The Government knew they had to respond to the efforts of Justice Wine who refused to allow a young girl to disappear back into the woodwork to cope with her problems alone and waited until the Government responded before he would deal with her case. We have had, as I said, the sad row over Fr. McVerry's hostel. He will not turn away homeless young people and as a result his accommodation, which is intended to provide for only five children at any given time, provides for between 12 and 15. There are two such hostels close to my constituency.
While those two cases have attracted attention, I am concerned about many young people who are not coming to the attention of either the press or the Department and are forgotten about. Those young people, particularly the more disturbed children, have been turned away from other hostels.
Following my involvement with the Ballymun problem I visited Percy Place, where a health board funded hostel is intended to provide short term emergency care. The pressure on that unit is so great and the provision of suitable longterm places is so inadequate that the emergency short term places are almost inevitably filled with long stay clients, as they are referred to. There is nowhere for them to go, so much so that to deal with the problem there has been a suggestion of sending one or two of the most difficult cases over to England. This is an Irish solution to a very serious problem.
What happens to these young people who cannot find a place? They are lucky if they arrive at Fr. McVerry's hostel because he will not turn them away even if it means overcrowding or causes immense problems with the neighbourhood. But what of those who turn up at the other hostels to be told the hostels are full, and are turned away? They go back on the streets, or perhaps to homes they have left because of serious problems. Quite often they move from relative to friend. All too often they find shelter all right but at the price of being involved in criminal activity or being sexually abused, whether male or female. That is not overstating the problem; that is the experience of many homeless young people. For them sexual favours or petty crimes are a small price to pay for having a roof over their head. They have very little choice indeed. Which of us might not make such a choice if they were the stark choices left to us at the age of 12, 14, 16 or 18, when there is no place to put down one's head?
It is a growing problem. All youth leaders and voluntary workers are aware it is on the increase. In 1987 the Eastern Health Board alone estimated — and they are not known for their exaggerated assessment of problems — there were 406 people under 18 homeless. In the last decade, when the problem was on the increase, the number of residential places reduced as many of the more old fashioned youth centres, homes and orphanges closed down. There is an immediate need for the Minister, as junior Minister, to devote all his time to this problem. I know he is working hard on the Child Care Bill, but it is working hard on the Child Care Bill, but it is clear that when that Bill goes through there will still be huge gaps in services, still huge areas needing to be legislated for, still a total lack of co-ordination between the Minister's Department and the Departments of Education and Justice.
There has been total failure at Cabinet level to iron out the centralisation and unification of services for young children in one Department, the Department of Health, who have long been accepted by all who study in the field as the appropriate Department to look after young people. when that Bill goes through, after its long, tortuous and slow process through this House under a number of Governments, it will leave areas of juvenile justice totally undealt with and huge gaps in co-ordination of service. It will also fail to deal with the adoption area adequately. There will be need for more Bills in those areas.
At the moment, in response to the recent case i referred to, which emerged in the courts, the Eastern Health Board and the Department of Education have committed themselves to the provision of a secure therapeutic unit in Finglas for girls, with some less intense services located there, and providing 20 places. I think my colleague will indicate that the problem at the moment of the Eastern Health Board is not as intense elsewhere, or as localised. However, it is increasing in all the cities and towns around the country, where the numbers, spread over the rest of the country, would be approximately equal to those of the Eastern Health Board. In that area 20 new places were provided for girls as a result of that case. It took constant embarrassment in the courts and publicity to get action on that. Four places are currently being provided in a small hostel in my constituency. There are no provisions for new places for boys. There is an urgent need for a secure therapeutic unit for boys, because even existing facilities are being undermined by having to accommodate very disturbed young men, who are not suitable and who need a very special regime. These are the young men whom the EHB are proposing to send off to Britain. We often look to that society as being less Christian than ours but they provided facilities to try to make up to these young people for what has happened to them.
There is an urgent need for an absolute concentration and devotion of the Minister's time to the child care problem. There is a need for increased impetus, increased resources for the provision of a secure therapeutic unit for boys and there must be a planned programme to provide adequate places. This is not an enormous problem but it is a very intense and immediate one for the children involved and for the society into which they will emerge damaged and destructive if we do not act. All of those who have worked in voluntary organisations have said that they can have great success with those young people. What they need is political support and an indication that there is the political will to solve the problem. I want the Minister to make a commitment tonight to a greatly improved performance in meeting this serious and growing problem.
I thank Deputy Flaherty for sharing her time and I compliment her on what she has said. As Deputy Flaherty said, research suggests that there are more than 700 young people who are homeless here, 300 to 400 being outside of Dublin. It is not just a city phenomenon but an increasing problem throughout the country. Because of the absence of emergency accommodation many children in Dublin have to sleep rough. In January, 43 people under the age of 18 presented themselves to Focus Point seeking accommodation. Unfortunately they had to turn away 26 who presumably had to sleep rough. Only four of the people who presented themselves at Focus Point in January were properly accommodated. The problem is continuing. In the month of May 38 people presented themselves to Focus Point, 17 male and 21 female and only a small proportion were adequately accommodated.
This is becoming a major problem. These children risk becoming involved in anti-social behaviour including petty crime, prostitution, drug taking, alcoholism and other types of behavioural problems. They are exposed to all types of exploitation and it has been suggested that two weeks living rough can cause irreparable damage to the personality of a young person, which makes rehabilitation very difficult. Lack of emergency accommodation is a major problem. There are two emergency hostels for girls in Dublin with ten emergency places and one hostel for boys with ten places. However, as some young people remain in these hostels for more than a night or a week the emergency places are lost so that other people have no place to stay. The immediate solution is to provide additional emergency places.
This problem is nationwide. The report of the task force on child care services published in 1980 made a number of recommendations which were not implemented. They recommended the setting up of a national council to advise on services for children, and a network of child care authorities throughout the country to provide services.
I am sorry to interrupt the Deputy, but the time available to him is now fully exhausted.
I would just point out to the Minister that we will have our own cardboard city in Dublin and in other parts of the country if we do not act sooner rather than later.
I share the concern of Deputies about the plight of homeless children and young persons and I would assure the House that the Government are fully aware of the problem and are taking a range of initiatives to deal with it. I would like to briefly outline some of the main developments that have been set in train, by our Government.
We have established a special fund of £4 million from the National Lottery for the development of services for disadvantaged young persons. The overall objective is to develop a wide range of community youth projects, aimed at meeting the needs of those young people who are facing special problems. In the allocation of this fund, priority consideration is given to the needs of the young homeless, young travellers and young substance abusers. A sum of £1 million has been set aside for the development of new services and initiatives aimed specifically at these groups.
As far as the young homeless are concerned, the main initiatives which are being assisted from this fund are in the Eastern Health Board area and include the following: a new community residential project for homeless boys is being established in the Tallaght area. This project will provide residential care for six boys aged between 12 and sixteen years; a similar residential project for homeless girls is to be located in the Ballymun area, and it is hoped that this will be operational later this year; a new residential unit for boys has been set up in Clontarf, which is providing longer-term accommodation for up to 10 boys in the 11-14 years age group; the Eastern Health Board have developed a new project called "Carers for Young People". The aim of this scheme is to place up to 10 very difficult children aged 14-16 years, with suitable families, who are at present being specially selected and trained; and a shelter for homeless boys in Ballymun run by the Arrupe Society is also receiving financial assistance from the special fund.
In addition the Eastern Health Board has set up a special team of social workers, to deal specifically with homeless children and young people. They are based in the areas of greatest need, that is, Tallaght, Ballyfermot, Ballymun, the north inner city and the south inner city. They are supported by the board's homeless persons unit, in Charles Street, where a social worker is available to provide counselling, advisory and referral services, to homeless young people.
Outside of the Dublin area, a number of other initiatives for the young homeless, young travellers and young substance abusers in Cork, Galway, Limerick, Tralee, Tullamore and Sligo, are also being supported from the special fund financed from the National Lottery.
Other initiatives I might mention include a recent report prepared by the Mid-Western Health Board in co-operation with Limerick Social Services Council on the problem of youth homelessness in the mid-western area. The Mid-Western Health Board are now preparing an action plan to deal with what has been described as the manageable problem of youth homelessness in Limerick.
I might also mention that funding has been made available by the Minister for the Environment for special projects for young homeless. For example, the organisation "Focus Point" has received capital funding of about £1 million from the Department of the Environment's Voluntary Housing Scheme towards the cost of a new flatlet project at Stanhope Street, Dublin, for vulnerable young homeless persons. Already grants amounting to £1.4 million have been paid to them and expenditure of a further £600,000 has been sanctioned for them. In addition Focus Point have received funding of about £50,000 from the Department of the Environment towards a residential facility at Arran Quay in Dublin.
It is very easy to say that all legal and statutory responsibility for children should be in one Department. There are many complex reasons why this is not so. The Department of Health have responsibility for the health of children, the Department of Education have responsibility for education and the Department of Justice are responsible in the justice and criminal area. It is not possible to take the expertise based in these different areas into one Department.
As the Deputy may be aware the lack of clear-cut statutory responsibility for homeless persons in the 16 to 18 years age group has caused some difficulties in developing an effective response to the problem. I am glad to say that this is being rectified in the Child Care Bill, which has now completed its passage through the Special Committee which was set up to examine it. An entirely new section has been inserted in the Bill which will impose a clear obligation on our health boards to provide accommodation for homeless young people, up to the age of 18 years, who have no accommodation available to them which they can reasonably occupy and who are unable to arrange accommodation for themselves. In such a case, a health board will be required to take steps, to make available accommodation for the homeless young person concerned. This is an important change in our legislative framework and I am confident that, taken in conjunction with the new powers being given to health boards to develop child care and family support services, it will go a long way towards relieving the problem of young homeless persons on the streets of our cities and towns.
I am pleased to have had the responsibility to deal with the Child Care Bill on behalf of the Government. We have a very positive Child Care Committee and outstanding departmental staff involved in a very committed way. I am confident that we will have an excellent Child Care legislative framework in position by the end of the year. I trust that this new legislation, along with the other initiatives we have taken, will go a long way towards alleviating the problems of the young homeless.