Mr. Dick Brady:

I would like to come back to the point about the homeless families that members of the committee met yesterday. I could not let it go without saying that my staff are dealing with homeless families and individuals on a daily basis and as far as I am concerned are dealing with them in the most humane way possible. There may be issues with some of the services but I can safely say that the people we have working in the homeless area are extremely well trained, well motivated and they go the extra mile or whatever it takes in order to be humane and treat the citizens of this city who happen to be homeless in the best possible way.

The issue on phone services is that there is a limited amount of accommodation and when people ring we have to go and find the accommodation. For people on the end of the phone that is an absolute travesty but until such time as we crack the main problem here, which is supply, we will have an over-reliance on a homeless system which was never designed to deal with the level of service users that are coming to us at this point in time.