Ms Mary Hurley:

Yes, and the allocations are a matter for the local authority. It presents challenges when large families present. It is very rare that families would be split up. If they present very late in the day, local authority workers will do their best to try to keep them together and if it is not possible that night, they will work to bring them together as quickly as possible but it can be very challenging when a very large family presents. It is something we are looking at in the delivery in our social housing programme so that we have that stock of large homes. We have asked the place finder service to go after it in terms of HAP properties for those large families. We regularly meet the Dublin Region Homeless Executive, DRHE, about this. It is very rare for the family unit to be separated and largely happens where a family presents who do not have identification and the local authority is not certain about the family unit.

On the quality of emergency accommodation, hubs obviously provide a much more secure and better quality of accommodation. We have been working to finalise the quality framework on all emergency accommodation but one of the issues that we are very focused on in the Department and at local authority level is to ensure the correct supports are in place in the accommodation we roll out. I know Senator Murnane O'Connor, Deputy Ó Broin and the Chair have been out to the Mater Dei hub and to other hubs and the physical quality of the premises along with the child and social supports there are immense.

Deputy Ó Broin raised the Homeless Reduction Act 2017 in the United Kingdom. We have met our opposite numbers in the UK about it and it is something we are looking at. There are interesting issues in it and we are teasing some of them out.

I will ask Mr. Kelly to refer to the issues around numbers. He has been working very closely with the Dublin Region Homeless Executive, DRHE, and he works with the regional heads on exits and the Garda stations. Before I pass over to Mr. Kelly, I refer to a question from Senator Murnane O'Connor. We can certainly set out how our funding is allocated and what the spend is. On emergency accommodation in Carlow, the practice where there is not a hub or a State facility is to refer somebody to a hotel. That is the current practice. There is no hub in Carlow so a person who presents there would certainly have his or her needs taken care of but it would be in hotel accommodation or some other form of emergency accommodation.