A pre-budget submission from Focus Ireland has highlighted some pretty damning figures for the Government on the issue of family homelessness. The number of families falling into homelessness has risen by more than tenfold since 2011. This means that when Fine Gael came to power, eight families were becoming homeless every month. Eight years later, that figure has risen to 90 families per month. It is not new to state the Government has failed to get to grips with the scale of the housing crisis. It has not delivered solutions for ordinary families who are struggling to keep a roof over their heads. The first thing the Minister must do to solve this crisis is to have the political will to do so. Does the Minister agree that the rate of family homelessness in this State constitutes a national emergency, and can he outline precisely the measures that will be taken in budget 2020 to address this dire situation?

I thank the Deputy for the question. It is true to say that housing supply has not caught up with demand yet, but it is catching up. Every month construction is starting on more than 2,000 new homes on sites throughout the country. We continue to have families in emergency accommodation and that is unacceptable. We continue to have high levels of presentations of families in emergency accommodation but despite that, there are fewer families in emergency accommodation tonight than there was this time last year. We continue to make a huge response by providing both emergency accommodation and new homes for families. The 10,000 new homes added to the stock of social housing are not a small number. I began my budget engagement with the Minister for Finance some time ago. We are in the middle of that, and a priority for me in those budget negotiations is ensuring that we have all relevant supports in place. That includes emergency accommodation, as well as continuing to work through Rebuilding Ireland, which in just two more years will have seen the introduction of 50,000 new homes into the stock of social housing. We have not seen that in this country for quite some time.