Micheál Martin (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)

Over the last five years since Fianna Fáil came back into government we have built close to 48,000 social houses - delivered. That is the most in 40 years. You would have to go back to the 1970s to get that level of social housing construction, but we need more because the population has increased. That is a factor in this. The composition of those presenting for homelessness and emergency accommodation has also changed. It is much more complex than perhaps the immediate understanding of the term or the experience of homelessness today. There is a European context to it which is very real now and there is a blurring of a lot of distinctions as well in terms of entitlements and so forth, so we have to be very clear-eyed about that. We are treating this as an emergency and as urgent and we are doing everything we can through local authorities-----

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