Dr. Niall Muldoon:

I am very concerned about the normalisation of homeless figures. As the Deputy said, we do not use the word "catastrophic" very often, but that is what we are looking at. On a consistent basis, the figures I have seen suggest that the vast majority of people in homelessness, including the 4,700 children, have been homeless for more than six months. That is an extremely lengthy time to be in homelessness. Most people in homelessness have been homeless for more than a year. That is an abnormal childhood. Even for children who get out of homelessness after 12 months, it is an abnormal childhood and has a considerable impact.

Normalisation comes along when we forget to mention these things and the numbers are no longer headlines. For the child, the normalisation is that he or she thinks that is where she or she belongs or what he or she deserves. Nobody is helping or changing the routine or narrative. Nobody is coming to provide a solution. That normalisation is going to impact those children for their lifetimes. It will carry on. Solutions around prevention that should have been put in a lot earlier have not been put in. People have worked hard on prevention in the last period of time. We have been signed up to the Lisbon treaty since 2020. We asked at that stage that we prioritise bringing children and families out of homelessness. There are now 2,200 families who are homeless. That is not a lot of units to move those children on and get them out of homelessness. It is about trying to create a narrative that tells children they are worth us making an extra effort. We need to change the narrative and tell those children that it will be different for them. We need to be saying that we will prevent people falling into homelessness and get those children out of homelessness as quickly as possible. Once that happens, we can move on to the other type of homelessness, which is that affecting single people who have a different set of issues. There is, unfortunately, normalisation going on. I will ask my colleague to respond on the other two elements of the Deputy's questions.