Willie Penrose (Longford-Westmeath, Labour)

As I stated, I am prepared to consider every suggestion to ensure that the Government's objective will be achieved while maintaining funding at its existing level, that there will be no reduction in the provision of essential front line services in 2011, and that the reconfiguration of services currently under way in Dublin can be completed. That is an extremely important objective in addition to that of offering continuous support for the roll-out of the regional homelessness action plans across the country.

The 34 local authorities have adopted homelessness action plans and their doing so will allow for greater integration of responses at local and regional levels. Our objective now is to accelerate our response to meet the targets set out in The Way Home: A Strategy to Address Adult Homelessness in Ireland 2008–2013. We will certainly be reviewing these issues. I would be surprised if additional legislation were required but, if so, we will certainly take cognisance of it in the context of submissions by Focus, Threshold and all the other groups involved.

See this speech in context