Dr. Niall Muldoon:

I will address the issue of the family hubs first. I am certainly clear, and we agree, it is a step up from the original emergency accommodation options of bed and breakfast accommodation or hotels. We are also clear, however, that nobody should be there for more than six months at the most. Within that timeframe family hubs should be comply with the standards. We also feel that the family hubs options are poised to be very similar to direct provision; we created a very good system for what we thought was going to be the very small number of people who were to come in to direct provision. It could be very difficult to move on from the family hubs option. We have specifically asked the Minister to tell us how long people are in family hubs. The statistics will often look at those who are in hotels and about the success of moving people in to family hubs, but not for how long. We now need to know the numbers of every family have been in a family hub. Anyone who has been there for longer than six months should be a priority to move on again. As the family hub option is a better service it could easily become institutionalised. For a lot of people a family hub could be a good place to stay, so we need to be careful of this also. It is our view that it should only be a stop-gap that leads to a more permanent solution. The effort around the creation of social housing and the move to Government-funded housing, as opposed to private sector housing, is the way forward and needs to be prioritised so we can move these people, under our own steam, to social housing as quickly as possible.

I will ask my colleague Ms Ward to speak about the national quality standards.