Dr. Niall Muldoon:

The letter issued approximately ten days ago and I have had nothing back yet. I made the same request to the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government. Hopefully, the two Ministers are linking up on the matter to respond as efficiently as possible. The Deputy asked about standards as well. A lot of these hubs have fantastic play areas nearby and within their neighbourhoods, but many do not. We have said the standard should be that we will not allow anyone to go to a hub that does not have a childcare support worker, good play facilities, a therapeutic connection and easy access to schools. Those are the sorts of things to start creating now. Ireland has a history of creating an immediate solution that lasts for ten or 15 years. We do not want to mention examples of that again, but we need to get to a stage where we provide high-quality, short-term solutions. The target was to get people in and out of family hubs within three months.

Emergency accommodation is a bigger issue. We need to start creating opportunities. As Ms Ward said and as the figures have shown, it is probably going to be 2022 or 2023 before the numbers level off. We could create a five-year contract for somebody. It does not have to be a full-time Civil Service job for life but we can put this system in place and provide supports. It is similar for the education system. Many of the extra supports do not have to be provided by a high-level psychologist and it could be therapists or child support workers. There are various ways to make sure that we make this happen in the immediate term and provide consistency around the country. People could be doing well in a particular hub in Dublin but other hubs are not as high quality and they are less consistent, less supportive and provide less access to what one needs even in terms of cooking facilities and stuff like that. A lot of them are glorified hotels that have installed extra washing and cooking facilities. It is those sort of things that we can start to do very quickly and move forward at the same time trying to create opportunities for people to get out of the hubs. I will pass the question on mental health scenarios on to my colleague.