Neasa Hourigan (Dublin Central, Green Party)
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I am bit late in today. I am trying to cover a number of committee meetings this morning.

I want to turn to the issue of funding of homelessness services. It is an area I know we have touched on in the past, and I know that quite an amount of work has been done between the Department and the housing committee on the issue of the provision of services, in particular consideration of NGOs versus private emergency accommodation, PEA. I went back and read the original report from last year, and I believe that the Department had a session in February on the issue with the housing committee. Obviously, the Committee of Public Accounts is particularly interested in the funding, the tender process and those kinds of issues. In general, however, there was a recommendation from last year that it would be advisable to phase out PEA in favour of NGOs. That was a goal outlined by the committee. Where are we with that goal? Is there an update on it?