Last week, I was contacted by a constituent who had received a letter from Cork City Council stating it had no emergency accommodation. All it was short of saying was that there was no room at the inn and people should go out to the stable. The crisis in emergency accommodation and homelessness in Cork is now so bad there is nowhere to put people. I received an email from a husband and wife who have two children aged five and one and have lived in emergency accommodation for 16 months. The mother told me it is soul destroying and heartbreaking. She is at breaking point and does not know who to turn to. This illustrates the homelessness crisis. This Government's policies are keeping these families in emergency accommodation. Where is the light at the end of the tunnel? I want to give this couple and the other lady hope. Can the Minister give me hope for them today?

The hope is in the amount of construction that is under way across the country in terms of public house building, at scale, once again.

I asked about the homeless. These people are homeless today, not in 16 months' time.

Let the Minister answer.

I am making the point. The Deputy will have seen in his constituency, throughout Cork and around the country the amount of house building in which the State is directly involved, with a view to meeting the needs of that family. It is clear for everyone to see. The numbers are there. If the Deputy wants to provide me with the details of the individual case to which he referred, I will work with him on it. We have made huge efforts to increase the number of emergency accommodation places. The Department of housing worked with local authorities last year to bring an additional 2,000 beds into use for homeless emergency accommodation. I am happy to work with the Deputy off-line on the case.