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

The thresholds have stayed the same. The reason why the numbers have gone down is because incomes have gone up. That is the reason why the numbers have gone down. I would have thought most people would believe that is a good development.

The fair deal is a form of universal healthcare with co-payment systems. We need to do something similar around home care. We are also examining hospital charges as a possible further step. It is not something one does in one go but over a series of budgets. We are making some progress.

Deputy Micheál Martin asked me a fair question on when the number of people living in emergency accommodation and the number of homeless people will go down. The truth is I cannot answer that question. I can tell him that we have taken more people out of homelessness in the past year than ever in the country’s history. The numbers becoming homeless is roughly the same, however. That is why the numbers have been roughly the same for the past year or so.

The drivers of homelessness are different ones. It is people losing their private rented accommodation but also people experiencing family breakdown. There is no reliable way to know how many people are going to become homeless. We can know how many people we are going to stop becoming homeless when they come to us or the numbers we can get out of emergency accommodation. We have never taken more people out of homelessness. At the same time, as many people become homeless, and there is no way of predicting that for sure.

It is worth putting on the record that in the year before Rebuilding Ireland was introduced as our policy, the numbers of families who were homeless increased by 60%. In the past year, the numbers of families who were homeless increased by 0.17%. That shows the difference Rebuilding Ireland has made. It has not got the numbers down yet but before Rebuilding Ireland, homelessness was rising by 60% a year. In the past year, it has only risen by just over 0.17%.

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