I ask the Tánaiste about the record number of people who are homeless. There are now 13,179 people living in homeless emergency accommodation. This is the highest number ever recorded in the history of the State. This includes 190 pensioners and almost 4,000 children who are growing up without a home and will spend Christmas in homeless emergency accommodation. At the same time, €220 million that was allocated and was supposed to be spent on building local authority social housing this year has not been spent and has been reallocated elsewhere. What is the Tánaiste going to do to urgently reduce the number of people who are homeless?

First of all, there have been record numbers of social housing provided in the last two years because of Government capital allocation and funding. As I said earlier, approximately 30,000 social homes have been delivered since we came to office and a further 22,000 are at design, tender or delivery stage. Therefore, there has been very substantial provision on the social housing front. Indeed, 2,500 tenant in situ purchases are in train as we speak, which prevents homelessness. Substantial numbers of people have been prevented from becoming homeless in the first place because of initiatives we have taken. Then the focus has been on reducing the amount of time people are in emergency accommodation, which is important. It is not just about the overall volume, which is too high, but it is also about making sure we prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place and getting them out then as quickly as we can.

The time is up, please.

Approximately 713 households were prevented from entering emergency accommodation by way of a tenancy being created. I apologise that I did not have enough time to go through it all.