Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As the Deputy has acknowledged, a number of Ministers have visited the centre in recent times. The Ministers, Deputies Harris, Coveney and Zappone, have attended so I do not know why a social worker or child welfare officer has not been appointed but I will follow it up. I was not aware of the issue until this morning. I will check up on it.

In terms of issues more generally, it is important that I say the Government takes issues such as child poverty and housing very seriously. As I said yesterday, I believe homelessness is a stain on our society. We will do everything we can to reduce it in the years ahead and eliminate it if possible. The housing plan is working but it will take time. We are seeing a very significant increase in the number of social houses being built and provided. There will be about 2,000 this year and 3,800 next year. When one adds in other things such as voids, long-term leases and purchases of privately developed housing, it will be 7,000 next year. This year if we take the private and public sector together we will probably build more new homes than any year since 2010. What happened in this country, largely as a consequence of economic mismanagement in the past, was a construction and banking collapse. As a consequence of that, for the best part of seven years very few new homes were built either by the private sector or the Government so we are catching up on seven years during which there was no housing supply. It will take us time to catch up. Notwithstanding that, every day people are being housed by the Government. Every working day, 80 individuals and their families are provided with housing by the Government. They are new tenancies and by next year, we will increase it to 100 a day. We are starting to see some results. It is significant that the number of families in bed and breakfast accommodation and hotels is falling and shows evidence of some progress. I was pleased to visit one of the family hubs last week to see how they operate and to see the quality of the accommodation that is now provided.

When it comes to rough sleeping, we have provided extra capacity in the system to make sure that nobody has to sleep rough over the winter period and into the spring and beyond. An extra 200 single and double beds have been provided across the city to make sure nobody has to sleep rough. We know from last Sunday night's count that there were spare beds available for both men and women in the city.

In terms of the issues the Deputy raised around children in general, I have not had a chance to visit the centre but I hope to do so in the future. I do not know what type of system of means testing is used. The broader picture regarding child welfare and child poverty is that child poverty is falling again having risen for a number of years. We have seen an increase in employment which is putting more money in parents' pockets and we are seeing some real differences. They are not just words; they are real differences and real changes introduced by Government both this year and next year. For example, in a few weeks' time, the prescription charge will go down for everyone under 70, including children. We will continue to reduce it in the years ahead as resources allow. Social welfare payments are going up. They went up this year for the first time in eight years. They will go up again next year from March. We have expanded free school meals, something I did as Minister for Social Protection, to all DEIS schools and beyond DEIS schools because more than half of children who are disadvantaged are not in DEIS schools. We are making real efforts as a Government and if the Deputy is honest about it and looks at the broader picture, he will see some progress is being made but we are only getting started.

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