The Tánaiste is aware that in May, 1,300 families were living in emergency accommodation funded by the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government. That is almost 3,000 children who are living in hotels, hostels and bed and breakfast accommodation. These figures do not include the hundreds of adults and children living in Tusla-funded domestic violence emergency and step-down accommodation. Nor do the figures include the 247 adults and 152 children trapped in direct provision who have leave to remain but are unable to secure housing. The Government's monthly homeless report significantly underestimates the numbers of adults and children living in State-funded emergency accommodation. Child homelessness, as I have said many times before on the floor of this Chamber, has increased by a shocking 300% in the six years that Fine Gael has been in government.

Even more shocking is the length of time these families and children are being left languishing in hotels and bed and breakfast accommodation. Some 70% of homeless families have been in emergency accommodation for more than six months, with 40% in hostels and hotels for more than a year, and there are at least 200 families in emergency accommodation for between 18 and 24 months.

On taking office, the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, announced what many of us knew for months, which was that the July target set by the previous Minister, Deputy Coveney, to move families out of hotels and into permanent housing was not going to be met. Instead of permanent homes, these families have received letters telling them what kind of accommodation they will get at some point in the future. According to the Minister, one third are to be moved into permanent homes, one third into short-term and insecure housing assistance payment, HAP, tenancies and one third into family hubs.

I accept that purpose-built emergency accommodation for families is better than a hotel or bed and breakfast accommodation. However, it is not a home and cannot be presented as a solution to the homeless crisis. Yesterday, two important reports were published, one by the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and the other by Drs. Murphy and Hearne of NUI Maynooth. Both warned that family hubs run the risk of replacing one problem with another. They warned of long-term institutionalisation and of what one author called therapeutic incarceration. Thankfully, both reports make clear recommendations on how to avoid this. They call for independent inspections of all emergency accommodation, particularly where there are children, a three-month legal limit to the length of time a family would stay in emergency accommodation, clear rehousing targets to give these families the homes they so desperately need and a legal sunset clause that all hubs would be closed by 2019.

My question is very simple. Will the Government support and fully implement these key recommendations?

My first point relates to the actions that are being taken under Rebuilding Ireland, the Government's multi-stranded action plan to deal with the housing and homelessness issue, with which the Deputy is very familiar. We are creating the right conditions and the environment to increase housing supply, especially in our cities and large towns, and we are encouraging competition among developers. We are making the land available and there is fast-tracking of planning. All those issues will ensure more housing supply will come on stream. We are ring-fencing €5.3 billion in the budget to 2021 to deliver 47,000 additional social houses. All that will help the very families about whom the Deputy is speaking.

The Government agrees that commercial hotels, in the first instance, are not appropriate places for families to live. Of course they are not. Family hubs will provide more appropriate and suitable accommodation for families than hotels. Family hubs are an important first response for families who become homeless and have no alternative to commercial hotels. However, to be clear, we do not believe, and I know the Deputy does not either, that family hubs are a long-term housing solution. There is no question of that. Those families will move into houses and apartments that will be provided under the social housing supports as supply becomes available.

I am familiar with the two reports that were published yesterday and to which the Deputy referred. They make some interesting points about ensuring these family hubs do not become normalised, are seen as short-term solutions and in no way become a longer-term solution for families, and that they continue to be used and seen as short-term accommodation. The key point is to provide more housing for the families using them. The multi-action plan will ensure that. The Minister will examine the recommendations to see if some of them need to be in place, including the legislative recommendations in terms of placing an obligation on local authorities to ensure families do not end up staying on a longer-term basis in family hubs.

I thank the Tánaiste for the response although she did not answer the question I asked. I did not ask what the Government is doing in other aspects of housing policy, and I would have much to criticise in that regard, but what the Government will do specifically to ensure family hubs do not become long-term institutionalised settings for the families there.

The problem is that emergency accommodation is already a long-term reality for families. I quoted the figures to the Tánaiste. Some 70% of families with children currently in emergency accommodation are in there long term. That is according to the six-month definition set in Government policy. It is not enough for the Government to say it does not want hubs to become a long-term intervention. It has to take specific action to prevent it, and I would strongly recommend the actions included in the two reports.

When direct provision was introduced, people warned that what was promised as a temporary intervention would become permanent, and they were right. I appeal to the Tánaiste to respond directly to the four recommendations in these two reports. Will the Government support them and fully implement them?

Everyone, including housing authorities, is working very hard to ensure the progression of homeless families to independent tenancies as quickly as possible. Every action that is being taken is targeted at ensuring people will not have to stay in that type of accommodation over a longer period. We have to recognise the numbers that have moved into secure accommodation from homeless accommodation in the course of the past year and the turnover that has been there, although homelessness continues to be a challenging issue and is a priority for the Government to tackle.

Many of the recommendations made by the chief commissioner of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, Ms Emily Logan, are already in train or complete. The Rebuilding Ireland action plan provides for early solutions to address the high number of households in emergency accommodation, including, as I have said, the delivery of social housing supply through the new build, acquisition and refurbishment schemes and independent tenancies for homeless households in the private rental sector through housing supports such as the enhanced housing assistance payment. All that is under way and will ensure families will not spend lengthy periods in these new style family hubs.