Mr. Conor Skehan:

I thank Deputy Ó Broin for raising the issues and giving me the opportunity to address the most important of those points, which is that the report, to which he alludes, was prepared two years ago. It was prepared because our main client groups, the housing authorities of Ireland raised their concerns. As soon as the new initiative came out to allocate the proportion of social housing to homeless as was laid out, we immediately had red flags raised the length and breadth of the country by our client housing authorities, saying that this could, unwittingly, give rise to people seeking to move from a conventional housing list into an accommodation list. Members will agree that this is the time we are talking about. Deputy Ó Broin, as ever, is correct. There was no evidence at that time that this was occurring and that is why no evidence was included in that report. The Housing Agency was doing what it is supposed to do, which is to send up red flags into the system to say there is a potential problem here: Be aware of it. That was the agency doing its job. To the Department and the Minister's credit, they did something about it, almost immediately. That is a very important point that Deputy Ó Broin is raising and there is a reason that the report did not have the materials in it.

In the matter of vigorous scrutiny, the next piece of evidence is similarly from one of these social media sites. This is why we need to look for something other than elephants, this is why it may be so difficult to spot the ants. This one has a heading on it "ANON POST" and reads: "Hi there, I am a Social Welfare Inspector and was wondering if one could have this post anonymous in the group."