Skehan was right to raise housing issue

BACK in January, when Conor Skehan, the outgoing chairman of the Housing Agency, said that some people presenting themselves as homeless in order to jump to the top of the housing list were ‘gaming the system’, his comments prompted the usual uproar from the usual suspects. He would be forced to back down, his critics said.

But Mr Skehan didn’t back down. Nor was he forced into any kind of retraction on the issue. Indeed, he stuck to his guns, stressing that he was always ‘careful’ with his words.

While Eoghan Murphy, the Minister for Housing, didn’t row in at the time in support of Mr Skehan’s comments, he didn’t dismiss them either. Indeed, it was only a short time afterwards that Mr Skehan was reappointed as chairman of the Housing Agency for another year.

Now it appears that under new Dublin City Council proposals, homeless families will no longer be given priority on the social housing waiting list. There will be no more queue jumping, in other words; those who have been on the list for a long time will no longer be bypassed by others on the basis that the latter are homeless.

There have been suggestions, in recent times, that problems have arisen because some homeless families have been holding out for their own council house, as opposed to accepting the offer of more temporary hotel accommodation. Indeed, in the report published yesterday, Dublin City Council noted that homeless families were definitely securing social housing in advance of others who had spent a ‘far longer time on the housing list’.

In the main, people have great sympathy for those in our society who are unfortunate enough to find themselves, at some stage in their lives, without a roof over their heads – through whatever circumstances. But fairness, when it comes to housing allocation, must be to the fore.

That this whole issue has now been highlighted, and will hopefully prompt even further debate, is therefore to be welcomed.