Fr. Peter McVerry puts it somewhat more forcefully when he says that the poor in Ireland have been shown two fingers by the Government through its recently announced cutbacks in social welfare supports. He went on to say that the Estimates were the most disgusting thing he had seen for many years. These sentiments are very much shared by the people. Apart from their generous support for overseas aid, over three quarters of them believe that whatever the cost, housing should be provided for the homeless and in a statistic that augurs ill for the Government in the next general election, 63% believe that the housing crisis is caused by Government inaction. The programme, Homelessness, an Integrated Strategy, was launched to great fanfare in May 2002. It set out a comprehensive approach to solving the problem, which was of the Government's own making, by the end of this year. The most recent figures from the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government indicate, however, that homelessness has increased nationally by 7% from 5,234 in 1999 to 5,581 in 2002. There are 48,000 households – 140,000 people – on housing waiting lists.