Ms Karen Feeney:

Absolutely, yes. As there is that collaboration with Tusla, quite a number of young people have passed through. We have worked with approximately 150 young people since the project started, and opened and admitted people, in 2016. Of those, probably a good 50% have been through the aftercare system. Still another 40% would have been from families or situations where there was an awful lot of stress but which did not meet the threshold for the young person to go into care. In some instances, and credit where credit is due, Trojan work has been done by people - through Meitheals, for example - who are there trying to help out. It is just that the family is too threadbare to support the young person in homelessness, or at risk of it, or in hidden homelessness.

The spend is not that much. What it is taking to deliver this service is not expensive considering that what it is saving is significant. Annualised through section 10, it takes less than €130,000 a year to run this service. The major point is that it is about prevention. We see the outcomes for people. At a philosophical level, we have also been committed to trying to break a lot of intergenerational cycles where we have known parents and grandparents who were in services previously. We can see that tailored support makes a difference. We are in partnership with Tusla and its aftercare service for many of our clients but it is about giving people that.

Once people move into accommodation, we are there to support them. We do not get too focused on age. Services do not cut out for people when they reach the age of 25 because small interventions can stop small problems becoming big problems and people then tend to sustain accommodation. A small percentage of cases will end in emergency accommodation. Many of the people we support are in contact with the criminal justice system but do not necessarily go to prison and there is low recidivism. We can see that.