It is appropriate that the Tánaiste is taking my question because she was instrumental in the holding of the children's rights referendum and ensuring the rights of children were inserted into the Constitution when she was Minister for Children and Youth Affairs. After 12 homeless families, including 30 children, had been sent to Garda stations last week in Dublin - there were reports that at least one of them may have slept in a park - Mr. Mike Allen of Focus Ireland pointed out on "Morning Ireland" that there was no legislative framework in place to look after the rights of children when their families were homeless. This morning, I published a Bill on behalf of the Labour Party to address that issue but I want to ask the Minister if the Government has plans to bring forward legislation to ensure that, when local authorities are presented with a homeless family, the children will not just be treated as dependants of somebody who is homeless, that their rights will be protected.

I will answer that question, if I can. What happened last week should not have happened and we have put measures in place to make sure it will not happen again. We do not need legislation to provide homes for people. There is very significant expenditure by the Government to provide appropriate levels of both temporary emergency accommodation for families and individuals and social housing to ultimately provide long-term solutions for the many families concerned. That cannot happen overnight, but there are construction teams on-site 24 hours a day, putting in place facilities to significantly improve the State's response to the problem of family homelessness. I have set very ambitious targets in the timelines needed and that is my focus.

The onus should be on the local authority, not the family.