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

I thank the Deputy. I will address the recategorisation summary which I received earlier today and which has been published. The report says that 741 individuals were recategorised. It outlines the parts of the country where that has happened. I do not know exactly when it happened. I have said this before when this issue has arisen and in regard to the collection of homeless numbers in general. We are not dealing with a perfect system for collecting and reporting data. I am not criticising anyone in the local authorities by saying this. The pathway accommodation and support system, PASS, is complicated to use and was never designed for this type of thing. We have recognised that we could be capturing a lot more data as people come in so as to put even better preventative measures in place. Work is now underway to do that and the Central Statistics Office, CSO, is helping, which I think is very important.

The number of presentations was down in July. Some 238 presented and 114 were prevented. The figure of 83 exits refers to Dublin only. It is not a national figure. The total number of people who are in emergency accommodation is lower than we thought it was. It is 9,527 individuals, including adults and children. I do not know exactly when the recategorisations happened so I cannot comment on that. However, we are endeavouring to constantly improve what we do. I have spoken about the publication of these numbers before. I had a discussion with my officials about this. Making sure that we are publishing accurate numbers is very important. A huge amount of time and resources goes into that. I need to work with the people in my Department and those in local authorities to see how we can improve the collection of data so that it is more efficient, better data is collected and the published numbers can be fair month-to-month comparisons. It is very difficult to do that when recategorisation work is under way. We have discovered people living in homes who are being counted in the wrong way.

In relation to the report itself, I note that there are three categories of home. One is local authority-owned, one is owned by an approved housing body, AHB, and one is leased by the local authority or the AHB. People living here have their own homes, their own doors and their own keys. It is very different to a family hub. Deputy Ó Broin has been in family hubs. He knows the type of setting we are talking about.