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

I thank the Senators for their questions. I absolutely agree with Senator Boyhan that the numbers in hotels are very disappointing. It is unacceptable. Putting a family in a hotel is not the appropriate first response and that is why we have moved to the hubs programme. It is important to have targets in order to drive policy but when it comes to families, the issues are far more complex than people might have realised initially. The hub programme has been far more successful in terms of being able to move people on into sustainable accommodation. We have 500 family hub spaces at the moment, with another 400 coming on stream in the next six to eight months. If one compares the figure for people in hotels and bed and breakfast accommodation today with a year ago, it is the same which makes people think nothing has happened.

More than 2,000 families exited hotels, the majority of them into homes rather than hubs. Exits have continued but so, too, have presentations and so we continue to have to accommodate people in hotels. We hope to get to the point in the coming months where this will no longer be the case for new presentations. We will continue to work with the families in hotels and bed and breakfasts to get them into sustainable homes.

Reference was made to the homelessness report for April and children. We will debate that report in the Dáil next week. As part of the inter-agency group work, along with my officials I have been working with the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Deputy Zappone, to ensure appropriate supports are in place for children and we keep them to the fore as we design policy responses. We take great care in looking after families. Last month, the number of families was down but the number of dependants was up because a small number of families presented with more children. We continue to face challenges finding suitable accommodation for larger families in the social housing stock and in other areas.

On the categorisation survey, when I have that information I will move quickly to publish it and then we can have a debate on it. On the appointment of a chairperson for the National Oversight and Audit Committee, NOAC, if the person selected accepts the appointment, the appointment will be made soon. This person, whom I know, knows a lot about the local authority system and has many ambitions in terms of reform of the system. Senator Boyhan spoke about a layer of oversight by NOAC. I am open to considering the proposal. It has been suggested to me that the work to be done around homeless figures should be conducted by the Central Statistics Office, CSO. In opening up that possibility, I do not want to in any way undermine the work being by the Department and the local authorities. As evidenced by the CSO's work on the completions data, it has better data sets and bigger teams and we need to explore if it might be able to do a piece of work on this area.

Senator Murnane O'Connor raised a number of questions but she has left the meeting. Should I wait until she comes back to answer them?