Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputies for their questions. To respond to the questions asked by Deputy Dessie Ellis, people are still presenting to the homeless services. We are putting a huge amount of work into prevention and there will be a big focus in the coming year on trying to use supports such as the homeless housing assistance payment to prevent people from having to enter emergency accommodation. When they enter emergency accommodation, the NGO sector and the Dublin regional homeless executive, DRHE, do everything they can to get them into secure and sustainable accommodation through measures such as the housing assistance payment scheme.

The number of homeless persons will come down as Rebuilding Ireland makes progress. We made more progress in 2017 than had been envisaged in the plan; therefore, Rebuilding Ireland is working in meeting our build and social housing support targets and doing so more quickly than we had anticipated. We can expect to see progress during 2018, but we must be vigilant and keep on working.

If Deputy Eoin Ó Broin is correct on the number of families living in hotels and bed and breakfast accommodation when I took office, there has been an increase as the figure of 700 which I quoted is correct. However, as outlined in the statement I released earlier and as I have stated today in the House, we did not anticipate the increase in the number of families who would seek assistance. I have discussed this issue with the Dublin regional homelessness executive and asked it to investigate the problem. It will very shortly come back to me with a report, on the basis of which we may have to make additional policy interventions to ensure we are doing everything in our power as policy makers to help people who are experiencing this crisis in their lives.

Deputy Dessie Ellis referred to the expected severe weather event. Because of better modelling by Met Éireann, we were able to anticipate its occurrence and put out additional outreach teams over the course of the weekend.In co-operation with the Peter McVerry Trust, we have opened a temporary facility to ensure no one will have to sleep out in the coming nights and days. The public has responded very well to our request that anyone who sees a person sleeping rough use homelessdublin.ie to notify us of the homeless person's location in order that we can quickly get a team out to him or her.

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