Mr. Mike Allen:

It is well worth remembering that point. Around 2010 we had brought down the level of homelessness to probably the lowest level ever achieved historically. Counting adults, we might only have been talking about 3,000 people or fewer.

I cannot remember the figure off the top of my head. It is also true that we have far more people in emergency accommodation. Since the tragic death of Jonathan Corrie the number of single people without children in emergency accommodation has gone up enormously. We have built more emergency beds in Dublin since his death than we have built social houses. Some of the way in which we think about homelessness leads us to the wrong solutions. The answer to homelessness is not emergency accommodation.