Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The figures the Minister's Department produces every month on homelessness are not accurate. They do not include adults and children in Tusla-funded domestic violence shelters or step-down accommodation. They do not include non-Irish nationals in emergency accommodation funded by the new communities unit. Crucially, they do not include those families trapped in direct provision having got their stamp 4 status but who are unable to secure alternative accommodation.

Tusla and the Department of Social Protection cannot currently give Members numbers for those first two categories but we know there are 400 families in direct provision who should not be there but who are essentially using direct provision as emergency accommodation. I have asked about this previously in a parliamentary question. The substance of my question today concerns whether the Minister and his Department will take a lead role in collating all the relevant data so the monthly records the Department publishes will give us an accurate picture of the number of families in all State-funded emergency accommodation.

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