What I say is not in any way to gazump Senator Gerard P. Craughwell and his e-mail to us all following the shock and horror of events in recent days and on the need to debate and take tangible action on the issue of homelessness, but we must propose an amendment to the Order of Business that the Minister come to the House today. The crisis is such that it demands immediacy rather than to be scheduled as a matter for debate tomorrow evening. A man lost his life a matter of yards from where we speak and it is unacceptable that we will again have a day's outrage and resort to business as usual. If there is genuine political will to do something about this crisis, we must press ahead and do it. That means now - today. It also means decisions backed up by resources to deal with the problem.

Since 2011, we have had two cuts to the rent allowance scheme and warnings were given at the time as to the impact the cuts would have. Some 168 people are sleeping rough in Dublin. It is not just a Dublin problem; people are sleeping rough in every urban centre throughout the country. There are 90,000 people on housing waiting lists - 20,000 in Dublin alone, 9,000 in Kildare and more than 1,000 in my town of Sligo.

We have seen this crisis throughout the country. Last week, some €2.2 billion was announced for a housing strategy that was supposed to solve all of the problems in the following six years. As we saw with the terrible loss of Jonathan Corrie's life this week, this matter requires immediate action. One wonders where the social dividend is from the 2,000 units that were to be available from NAMA since 2012. How many boarded-up units do we have in local authorities throughout the country, where councils do not have the money to do up such facilities to accommodate people immediately? How many Army barracks, fire stations and Garda stations have closed around the country? Surely there is no shortage of property. What we need is the political will, rather than, as with the suicide crisis, aimlessly saying, "Shock, horror" from time to time when there is a tragedy. We all manufacture anger here but do nothing about it. For that reason we must push this issue to a vote today.

The Minister must come here today and we must be prepared to take the appropriate action. Talk is cheap, as we have seen. No Government has covered itself in glory in dealing with this issue, but it has now clearly come to this. Somebody has died across the street and we are sitting here saying that we will talk about it tomorrow and have it sorted by 2020. We have empty buildings all over the country and while there is clearly money to do certain things, there is no one to accommodate homeless persons. As I lay in bed this morning, I was embarrassed listening to the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy Simon Coveney, who promised people that there was a plan to get homeless persons off the streets when it gets cold at Christmas. Let us get them off the street today, not when it gets cold at Christmas. It is cold already and it is not acceptable to deal with this situation in two years time. Perhaps the Minister was outside his comfort zone of agriculture this morning. He was a disgrace telling the nation that he had a plan if it got cold at Christmas. How dare he? How dare we all settle for such mediocrity?

When time allows, but certainly sooner rather than later, will the Minister attend this House to explain his Department's inactivity in seeking to open the Russian market to beef and live cattle? Why are his officials not taking a proactive approach? Why can he or one of his departmental officials not go on tour to have these markets opened? Denmark, the Netherlands, Italy and France have agreed bilateral agreements for the opening of the Russian market by the end of December, while we sit on our hands blatantly ignoring the silent crisis of our agricultural SME sector which needs us to be proactive. We cannot operate on some kind of administrative auto-pilot, indifferent to the difficulties facing farming families. The four countries I named have opened up the Russian market, yet we are sitting here waiting for a lead to be taken on a European-wide basis. A focused, proactive approach is required by the Minister in order to achieve what is required for marketing Irish beef.

Will the Senator clarify the amendment he has proposed?

I propose that the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Alan Kelly, come to the House today to outline for us the urgent measures that will be taken to address the housing crisis.

I thank the Leader and Senator Gerard P. Craughwell for initiating the debate on homelessness which we will have for two hours tomorrow evening with the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Alan Kelly. It is extremely important given the tragic death in the past 24 hours of a homeless man on the streets of Dublin. It happened very close to Leinster House. We should all extend sympathy to the man's family. It is shameful that somebody has died while living and sleeping on the streets of Dublin. It is very easy to indulge in manufactured outrage, but I do not think that is an appropriate response to this tragedy. A far more appropriate response is a practical programme of initiatives which will be taken to address the serious and urgent problem of homelessness in Dublin. I commend the Minister for announcing today that he will be convening a special forum on homelessness on Thursday this week. He has invited the CEOs of the four Dublin local authorities, the Lord Mayor of Dublin, the cathaoirligh of South Dublin, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown and Fingal county councils, as well as the non-governmental organisations working in the sector. He has also invited the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Dr. Diarmuid Martin, to meet him on Thursday.

Recognising that all of these stakeholders have a part to play in tackling homelessness, it should not be beyond the abilities of four Dublin councils to address, in particular, the urgent and pressing problems, with approximately 160 to 170 people sleeping rough on the streets of Dublin. A practical and quick response like that given by the Minister is far more effective than the hyperbole and manufactured outrage from those who actually stopped the social housing programme building and laid the seeds for the homelessness problem with which the Government is trying to deal. I take issue with the dismissal by Senator Marc MacSharry of the €3.8 billion social housing programme announced last week by the Minister.

That will bring it back to 2009 levels, when there were 60,000 homeless persons as opposed to 90,000 today.

It is an extremely ambitious programme that seeks to redress the sustained neglect over many years of building in the social housing sector which has led us to the crisis in which we find ourselves. I thank the Leader for organising the debate.

I commend the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Jan O'Sullivan, for her movement on the issue of junior cycle reform and her indication that she would be willing to engage further with teachers unions on the issue of capacity, in particular. A huge consensus is building among parents, educators and school students on the need to ensure higher levels of school-based assessment in junior cycle reforms. It is highly unfortunate that teachers are out on strike today and that pupils are deprived of education for a day. I hope, as I am sure do all Members, for a resumption in negotiations between the Minister and the teachers' unions in short order to ensure there will not be a further day of strike action in the new year because it is important to recognise that it is in the interests of pupils to try to move towards a better system of junior cycle assessment.

I welcome the publication late last week of the heads of the sexual offences Bill and, in particular, those provisions dealing with the criminalisation of sex purchase, which members of the justice committee had recommended unanimously last year. I also commend the organisation, Facing Forward, which held a worthwhile and important seminar in Dublin Castle yesterday on the use of restorative justice in the context of sexual offences. It is something Members might consider building into the sexual offences Bill and I look forward to the debate on it when it is brought before the House in the new year. I ask the Leader to inquire if the Bill might commence its passage in this House.

As the news story of the 43 year old man who died in a doorstep during the Dublin winter of 2014 was told by reporters, the words "in the shadow of Leinster House" were repeated continuously. In the shadow of Leinster House, as mentioned, more than 160 others in Dublin city are sleeping rough, which represents a rise of 20% on the figure for the same period last year. Each Member could cite statistics from his or her own community, as has happened. For example, 173 people are homeless in the South Dublin County Council area. Consequently, I support the request for an urgent debate on homelessness in Ireland and thank Senator Gerard P. Craughwell for putting forward that proposal. Something must be done that is not being done now and either the Government analyses of these problems are wrong or incomplete or the political ideologies that direct its solutions are insipid, vacuous of original vision or simply outdated. However, in order that such a debate could be as fruitful as possible and inclusive of thoughtful analysis and imaginative recommendations on what can be done differently, at least having one day or more than 24 hours would not go astray to help Members to prepare their remarks. I support the Leader in this regard and thank him for inviting the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Alan Kelly, to appear in the House tomorrow afternoon or later in the evening.

However, this is also the Dublin winter in which there is deep agitation in the air. This has resulted in intimidating and menacing behaviour in some of our citizens and residents, as well as civil unrest and many of us are wondering why is this and what is happening. I believe it has much to do with the increasing and unattended to gap between those with enough and those with little or nothing. Several months ago, a man named Thomas Piketty gave a lecture to more than 700 people in Dublin on his book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, and one of his primary messages was that inequality of wealth and income was not good for any society. He is not the first with this message and it is not good for any society, but is the seedbed of political, social and economic instability; therefore, solutions that are multifaceted and based on transparent and collective reasoning must be found. Recent pronouncements in the pre-general election mud slings on the left-right divide and the tax and spend versus the less tax and more spending approach are not worthy of citizens. They deserve more from Members, especially those who will not have a place to sleep indoors this evening.