Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I would respectfully ask the Deputy not to put words in my mouth. This is too important an issue to play politics with. The cause of homelessness and the housing crisis is a lack of supply of housing and a lack of affordable housing but there are plenty of other factors involved as well. Those of us who are interested in this area and have spent time visiting facilities and NGOs will understand that there are other factors at play as well. As the Deputy mentioned, for many of those who are rough sleeping mental health and addiction are at play. There are lots of people who, thankfully, are in shelters and emergency accommodation, who also have problems with addiction and mental health. For this reason, just providing housing is not enough. We are trying to adopt a holistic approach, particularly under the banner of Housing First, which is providing shelter and housing, as well as the additional supports that are needed to help people maintain tenancies and not fall back into homelessness. These are the things we need to do, and are doing, around mental health and addiction supports. We are working with Simon in this area, which is a splendid NGO in the work it does in terms of ensuring people discharged from hospitals do not end up in homelessness. There are other initiatives around addiction in particular on which we propose to work with Simon into the future. Dealing with homelessness requires a holistic approach. It cannot be resolved by the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government alone. We could build 40,000 or 50,000 houses in a couple of years' time and still have homelessness because it is a social problem as well as one that is related to the number of roofs in the country.

The Deputy is correct that the rough sleepers are not included in the statistics published today, nor are people who are in domestic refuges but people who do not have an entitlement and people who have turned down offers of housing are included. The figures will never be exact. I do not like to get involved in statistical debate. No matter what the correct figure is, there are too many people in emergency accommodation and we need to change that.