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

To repeat what I said earlier about homelessness, there are more people in emergency accommodation today than there were a year ago. It is very difficult for those people who have gone into emergency accommodation in the past year. In the same period, thousands of people have left emergency accommodation and others were prevented from entering it as a result of the solutions we put in place. We need to put in place more solutions and I have already outlined some of what we are doing and further improvements we are making to try to make the policy response better. We are trying to give more tools and resources to partners in the non-governmental organisation sector working with local authorities to help people either by preventing them from entering emergency accommodation or bringing them out of emergency accommodation. We still have a way to go with the work we are doing.

Programmes such as Housing First work. The latter programme demonstrates a retention rate of 85% when people go into it. Such people are not falling back into homelessness. Family hubs work as the average time there is only six months; people spend much longer in hotels. There is a great retention rate as I do not believe one family has returned to a family hub after leaving for a tenancy. The Deputy said over 5,000 adults entered emergency accommodation last year but that number is not correct. I am not sure where-----