Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is important to note that, while any reduction in homeless figures is welcome, we are not yet seeing a trend. When we put out the figures for December, I made the point that I do not want to give people false hope.

A huge amount of work is going on between ourselves and our partners in the NGO sector to help people in this difficult crisis situation.

I noticed on Twitter, now that I am back on it, that the Deputy was talking about my media strategy in regard to the figures. How many times now have we published the homeless figures? We were at a meeting in the Department that day and I told the Deputy I was going back to my office to try to get the homeless figures out as quickly as possible. That was genuine. I got them out that evening for the newspapers the next day because the Deputy has a problem with them coming out on a Friday.