Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Doherty's question is how can he take seriously that homelessness is a Government priority. Deputy Doherty can take us seriously is several ways on that point. First, a new Department has been dedicated mainly to housing, planning and local government. This change involved taking functions out of that Department and moving them to another Department so that the new Department could focus on housing.

A total of €140 million has been spent on emergency accommodation, which represents a major increase on spending on such accommodation. This is taxpayers' money that we would not be spending if this was not an emergency that required spending on emergency accommodation. That is why we do it.

Committee members can see in Project Ireland 2040 a money-backed commitment to build 110,000 social houses, including new homes and new houses over the next ten years. Committee members will have seen our commitment to establish a State development agency, a new State body that will acquire or buy State lands and build on them.

If commitment is down to the amount of work we are doing and the amount of money we are spending, then I do not think anyone can doubt the level of Government commitment to this issue. What we are not seeing is the kind of results we would like to see. That is unbelievably frustrating, most of all for people who are affected by homelessness but also for those who are trying to solve the problem and assist people who are in homelessness.

I saw figures yesterday that indicate a big reduction in the number of people who are rough sleeping. That is welcome and is, in large part, down to the additional bed spaces made available and the additional funding for the agencies. It seems there has been a small reduction in individual homeless but a big and disturbing increase in the number of families who are in emergency accommodation. Certainly, more are becoming homeless every month than we can get out of homelessness and that is extremely disturbing. It is very frustrating that we have not seen sufficient progress to date, but it is certainly not down to lack of prioritisation, funding, effort or commitment from Government. We need to drill down into that and understand better why the policies that we have put into effect thus far have not had the results that we would have hoped for.