Mr. Mike Allen:

Yes, it is an increase each month. Those are children with their families. The two things I point out in terms of prevention are advice and information. Mr. Jordan will say more about this. We find many of the families that become homeless neither sought nor received advice before they became homeless. Focus Ireland's advice and information service is entirely funded from voluntary fund-raising. Mr. Jordan can speak for himself about the difficulty in getting State funding for this crucial service which will save people a great deal of trauma and money.

Regarding anti-social behaviour, there is a very under-used resource in Focus Ireland's community settlement work. In a number of local authorities in Limerick, Sligo and, to some extent, in Dún Laoghaire, we have a team which works with local authorities which are about to evict families because of anti-social behaviour, particularly by their adolescent children. We have a very high success rate in doing that. The amount of money and trauma that sort of intervention saves is out of proportion with the fact that it is so little used.