Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Yes. I, too, will be perfectly honest. I do not get the sense that the Taoiseach and the Government are on top of this issue. The reality is that promise after promise has been broken. There have been commitments given by the Government that the position would improve. When he was Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government, the Tánaiste pledged that hotels would no longer be used by July 2017. Not only is the position getting worse, it is getting worse at an accelerated pace. A total of 3,755 children are now homeless; the figure has gone up by nearly 50% in the last year. There is something fundamentally wrong. The Taoiseach has come before the committee and said he will give more time to this issue from now on. What does he mean by that? Has he not been giving it the level of priority it deserves during the months since he became Taoiseach?