Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is very welcome. Last week, he and his Government colleagues voted to lift the eviction ban and increase the number of homeless citizens in our State. He did this in the knowledge that 17 of the 31 local authorities in the State told him they had nowhere for these people to go. We know from the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, that there are 3,000 evictions due to fall in April. There are currently 11,754 homeless people in the State, including 3,500 children, but those figures do not include the 400 applicants for international protection who are sleeping on our streets right now. It is a pity that I am the first person to mention those figures after almost 40 minutes of debate.