Deputy Eoghan Murphy:

Unfortunately we are dealing with a lot of misinformation here. The Deputy cited Kildare; Kildare is not involved in a recategorisation. There was a surge in the number of presentation in January and February. When we saw the surge in January over December, I asked the Dublin Regional Homeless Executive to prepare a report on the reasons for the increase in presentations. At the time I was told these were unanticipated increases. It is possible to anticipate increases for certain reasons but these were presentations for reasons that had not been anticipated. I asked the DRHE to complete a more detailed report on that.

We do not know when the miscategorisation occurred. The Deputy said if it had not occurred at X time, we would have reached a homelessness figure of 10,000. We do not know that because we do not know when the miscategorisation occurred. What we know is that the global number is lower than what we thought it was. I said previously that 10,000 does not tell us anything that 9,600 does not tell us, which is that we have a crisis. As far as the public are concerned, they think we have reached 10,000. One of the red tops stated "10,000 now sleeping on the streets" when the March report was published. Unfortunately there is considerable misinformation on the subject, which is what I am trying to clarify and clean up. We know that family presentations in Dublin reduced by 50% between February and March, which is welcome. We do not know if it is a trend because it is not possible to detect trends from month to month, which is a further problem with monthly reporting.

The recategorisation was brought to my attention when the March homeless report was brought to my attention in that people who were not in emergency accommodation were being counted as being in emergency accommodation. It only happened with the agreement of the local authorities involved. There was no opposition to it. It is not a question of local authorities refusing to comply because local authorities did not get a direction. As I said, Kildare was not involved in this. It was a January report into something else that brought this to our attention together with the March homeless numbers. So it was not actually for this. When I was told about it, I could not keep it from the public because I knew it meant we had a problem with our data. That is why I was upfront about it and why I said we were doing more to get to the bottom of it. What was presented to me in March is now rolled into the report that was instigated at the beginning of January. It will come to its conclusion very shortly because I want to be able to publish it so that we can talk about this.

The second report is coming from the interagency group which I set up at the housing summit in September. It was as a result of a request from the NGOs to better co-ordinate the State resources in working with them because a number of things were falling through the gap in terms of funding commitments or resources and those types of things between the different partner organisations and the different types of care supports they were putting in place. That work has been ongoing and we will get its first report very shortly. It will continue to exist as a body to better co-ordinate the Government response to the crisis we face.

Section 10 provides for funding for emergency accommodation. As I mentioned earlier, local authorities have been using that funding to prevent people from going into emergency accommodation or to get them out of emergency accommodation. Therefore it is not just being used to fund hostels, hotels, hubs and everything else. We will have to look at that to ascertain the implications of how it is being spent in other areas. As I said, Deputy Ó Broin's figures are not accurate and are not official; it is not a complete picture. If we want to avoid doing any more damage at present, we should wait for the complete picture. I think the Deputy is obsessing about the wrong things here. We should be focusing on the pathways, the supports for the people who are in emergency accommodation and not this desperate attempt to reach a figure of 10,000.