Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

That response - €100 million - is meaningless. The hotel money is an appalling waste. The Capuchin centre gets €450,000 and the Taoiseach is talking about €100 million for children in emergency accommodation. I will give the Taoiseach the figures again. In 2013, 4,747 children attended for meals at that centre. At the end of last year, 8,353 had attended. That says it all. There is a terrible disconnect between the official rhetoric and the reality.

The census figures from the Central Statistics Office, CSO, give the truth as well. A total of 2% of all houses and apartments occupied nationwide at the moment are new, built between 2011 and last year. Some 11,572 new houses were built in Dublin during that time. The Taoiseach knows the big difference between the CSO figures and those of the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government in terms of actual new builds. In no way is the response commensurate with the scale of the crisis.

One lesson that I took away from the Capuchin centre, which they wanted me to bring back to Leinster House, was the enormous psychological impact on the children in terms of the stigma of homelessness and the lack of any stable, permanent anchor in their lives. No officers have been appointed. The very least the Taoiseach should do is recognise the reality for those children and give additional supports and officers to the centre.

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