The Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice (JCFJ) welcomes the opportunity to contribute its views in relation to the development of the Framework Statutory Homeless Action Plan for the Dublin Region 2014–2016.

The new Statutory Framework follows earlier strategy documents on addressing homelessness in Dublin. All of these have had as core objectives the ending of long-term homelessness and the elimination of the need for any person to sleep rough. Despite the allocation of additional resources for homeless services, and improvements in some aspects of service provision, these core objectives are far from being achieved, a reality which is starkly illustrated by the fact that the target date for ending long-term homelessness was moved from 2010, as originally envisaged, to 2016.

The planned new Action Plan for the Dublin Region needs to take account of the reality and implications of the failures of previous plans. It needs to adopt a radical approach, with measures that are commensurate both with the scale of the problem of homelessness in the Region and the high aspirations outlined in official policy statements on addressing homelessness.