'Next redress scheme will be for homeless children'

Shauna Heneghan from Dublin with her three children who are aged 5, 16 months, and just eight weeks, and are in emergency accomodation in Co Kildare. Picture: Moya Nolan

Eight weeks ago, Shauna Heneghan gave birth to her third child, a baby girl. Two weeks ago, she was left homeless.

In a story that will be all too familiar to so many renters in Ireland at present, the couple who owned her flat in Kilmainham, south Dublin, were selling up.

She was left with her three children, a car, and the belongings they had built up over a five-year stay in the apartment. Over the next 12 days, they were forced to move between three different emergency accommodation sites in two different counties.

Shauna, a 30-year-old from Ballyfermot in the west of the city, could not find any accommodation covered under the Housing Assistance Payment (HAP).

Her three children are aged 5, 16 months, and just eight weeks. She has been on the housing list with Dublin City Council since 2018.

“I had given them loads of notice,” Shauna, a qualified childcare worker, told the Irish Examiner, of her contact with Dublin City Council’s homeless services.

“I had known I was going to have to go into emergency accommodation because I simply couldn’t find a property to rent.”

They told me to ring the day before we had to move out. When I did, they said: 'We don’t have anything for you, we’ve never been so busy.' ”

Emergency accommodation services throughout the country had already been under considerable pressure at the start of this year.

That situation has been exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent influx of Ukrainian refugees into Ireland.

Homeless figures

The figures across Dublin’s four local authorities are stark. Since December 31 of last year, 188 families have entered emergency accommodation across the capital. 

Some 383 of the people affected are children. Just fewer than 3,000 children now live in emergency accommodation in Dublin amid the worst housing and rental crisis in living memory.

It doesn’t matter if you’re approved for HAP, as Shauna is. If there are no properties to rent, then people will become homeless. 

Emergency accommodation itself is now feeling the pinch. At least two local authorities in recent weeks — Limerick and Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown — have admitted that they have no such accommodation available.

As Shauna spoke on the phone this week, her eight-week-old daughter cooed down the line. She's just one of thousands of Irish children growing up in a situation which experts agree may well cause them lifelong difficulties. 

Broken lift

Shauna was eventually given accommodation for her and her three children, on the third floor of a hotel in Co Kildare; moving people into emergency accommodation in the jurisdiction of another local authority is becoming increasingly common. The only lift was not reliable, and eventually stopped working entirely.

“I’m a single mother of three children," she said.

I can’t carry a double-pram up three flights of stairs every time we need to do something. 

“There’s no microwave in the room. I have to be able to sterilise bottles to feed my children. They’re too young to be left alone. So what was I supposed to do? They knew my needs, but the accommodation just wasn’t matching them.”

When the lift in that hotel stopped working, Shauna sought help from the Dublin Region Homeless Executive once more. They provided her with a room at an emergency accommodation hub in Dublin’s south city. Once more, access to the room required traversing a flight of 11 steps, with her double buggy.

“They must’ve known what my needs were — I need a ramp,” she said. "Yet this is where we ended up again."

Shauna and her family only stayed at the Dublin hub for one night before she insisted to DRHE that they be moved once more.

“The place was like a cell, there’s no other way to describe it,” she said. 

That one night broke me, I just sobbed my heart out. They wanted me to sign forms and I was just in tears. And you’re stuck because you’ve literally nowhere else to go.

“I told them that if you leave us there, my kids won’t have a mother, I’ll have a breakdown. I would not have been in a good place. I’ve suffered with anxiety and depression since my partner [the father of Shauna’s eldest daughter] died five years ago. But I have to be strong for my kids, I have to get on with it.”

The next day she was given a place at a separate Kildare location — one which she says is well run.

“They had said they couldn’t promise anything, that I’m not the only one in this situation, but the following morning we had this place," she said. "It shows they can find you something when they have to.”

She describes herself, however, as “distraught” by her experience across the past two weeks.

“I had been ringing them every day telling them that this simply isn’t going to work," she said.

I can’t have three kids in places like where they were putting me. I have been stressed out of my head, close to a breakdown.”

Health and safety issues

Hazel de Nortuin is a People Before Profit councillor in Ballyfermot who Shauna contacted for help.

She says the current housing squeeze is “affecting more and more people, and the larger the family, the more needs they have, the worse the situation is”.

“In one morning I had both Shauna and another mother with an eight-month-old who has been sofa surfing,” she says.

“Since the family hubs were established, we’ve been raising concerns about the standard of accommodation and the conditions that are being placed on people.

There are health and safety issues here — these properties should have to be deemed adequate to be housing people.”

Many emergency accommodation sites have specific rules – be they curfews, or restrictions on visitors.

“It’s a horrible, hostile position to be in, and to have children in,” said Ms De Nortuin.

“I have small children. Even just going down the road with them is an ordeal. 

Now look at it from the child’s perspective. They must be so fearful to see their parents constantly upset. 

"How are the parents supposed to engage with their children while going through this? Honestly, I think the next redress scheme the State will end up doing will be the children who’ve been in homeless accommodation for far too long.”

She says she doesn’t “see an end to it, with the system that is currently being operated”. 

“Those that are renting are just a step away from homelessness," she said.

It’s a horrible way to live, and it just seems to be getting worse and worse and worse, more than I would have thought possible when I first became a councillor.”

The Dublin Region Homeless Executive told the Irish Examiner that it “consistently monitors the demand for emergency accommodation and is working to source additional units”.

Regarding Shauna’s situation, a spokesperson said that “all families that present are assessed and ... are offered the most suitable available placement based on the assessment”.