Mr. Wayne Stanley:

I do not know if anybody else wants to come in, but I think we hold the same position as Mr. McCafferty. I think everyone does. The truth is, as I said in the opening remarks, there is a trauma to homelessness and there are issues to be dealt with when people experience homelessness but, fundamentally, the increase in homelessness we are seeing is because the housing system is broken. If leasing is a part of that, we support it as an immediate, interim or medium-term action. In particular if the properties are being allocated to people who are experiencing long-term homelessness, we can see the very real impact that can have. In the long term, what we really want to see is a build-up of public housing that will meet the needs of the State into the long term.

Mr. McCafferty covered a lot of the questions on the growing population. The growth in our population has not been a shock, but it has not necessarily been planned for. The Chair is correct. I think the question being asked is: what is the medium to long-term view? Another issue that concerns us when it comes to homelessness is that as the crisis has become more acute, and as the number of people presenting over time has increased, we have gone back to look at what the immediate thing is that we need to do because the crisis of somebody crossing the Threshold service is an immediate thing. The tenant in situscheme is a perfect example of that, but it is not providing additional stock in the system. Who is minded to make sure that we are getting to the 30,000, 40,000 and 50,000 units of accommodation that we need as a State every year over the longer term? We must make sure that in policy we view the immediate but not at the expense of the medium and long term.