An “emergency response” to the homeless crisis, including a possible ban on no-fault evictions, is being urged on Government by an Oireachtas committee. Among the Joint Committee on Housing’s 14 members are eight Government members. Its report on homelessness published on Thursday describes members’ “deep concern” at the rising levels of destitution. It makes 14 recommendations including that “Government ... introduce and emergency package of measures” to stem numbers flowing into emergency accommodation and accelerate numbers exiting. The most recent data from the Department of Housing show there were 17,548 people in emergency accommodation in April, including 11,944 adults and 5,604 children. This is 12.6 per cent increase in a year.Numbers have climbed since 2014, apart from brief dips each year in the month of December and for a time during Covid when a no-fault eviction ban was in place. Divisions on whether this measure should be reintroduced were evident at the report’s publication on the Leinster House campus. [ Council says €6m guesthouse will pay for itself due to cost of homeless accommodationOpens in new window ]While it “urges the Minister [for Housing James Browne] to keep all options under review” including “an emergency ban on no-fault evictions for a defined period of time,” Fine Gael’s Micheál Carrigy TD and committee chair said he did “not believe” a ban would work and could reduce supply in the private rented market. “None of us wants to see any child [homeless] but I do believe the measures [in the report] we put forward will work,” he said. The impact of Government housing policy would be kept under “review” by the committee he said and no option was “off the table”, but would not say what metric should trigger a ban. Committee member and Social Democrats housing spokesman Rory Hearne TD supported an immediate ban. Describing current homelessness as a “human catastrophe” he said it was “an emergency that has to be responded to”. He welcomed the report’s reference to a possible eviction ban “because it has brought it back into the public arena”. There had been 22,000 notices to quit to households in the last 12 months, he said. “We have not seen these numbers since the Famine.”Eoin Ó Broin TD and Sinn Féin’s housing spokesman, also a committee member, urged commentators not to focus solely on the question of a ban. “At the core of the report is a call for an emergency response to end long term homelessness. That is possible.” There was need for “much greater focus on prevention” he said. He noted the recommendation of “increased funding for vital ... schemes including tenant-in-situ” whereby local authorities purchase private rented properties where the landlord is selling and the tenant is eligible for social housing, to become the tenant’s social-housing landlord.“One message our committee does want to send is unless there is an emergency response, a focus on prevention and accelerated exits, this crisis is going to get worse,” said Ó Broin. “The Minister needs to listen and change the approach [and] embrace the report.” Committee member Richard Boyd Barrett TD of People Before Profit said the report put it to Government “how unacceptable” homelessness numbers were. “The fact it has just got worse and worse and worse regardless of the policies that have been implemented is a stain on our society and the political system. The human hardship and suffering that is being imposed on families ... is really appalling and it is particularly unacceptable In terms of [its impact on] children.”The report calls on Government to develop a child homelessness strategy; to consider a referendum of the right to housing, and that the current review of Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) rates is shared with the committee as soon as complete.