The vision of the Homeless Agency Partnership is that by 2010 long-term homelessness and the need to sleep rough in Dublin will be eliminated. Our action plan A Key to the Door, focusing on the three strategic aims of prevention, support and housing, now places the emphasis on ending long-term homelessness as opposed to managing it1. Our vision also provides a clear direction on the need to ensure that where homelessness does exist there will be an effective response in terms of quality specialist service provision.

It is within this context that a range of emergency and transitional programmes exist in order to progress both individuals and families away from long-term homelessness and into sustainable accommodation outcomes. This is the pathway to home that must be achieved for homeless persons whether through local authority rented accommodation or the voluntary and co-operative sector, as well as through arrangements entered into by housing authorities with private owners of accommodation under the Rental Accommodation Scheme (RAS).