This morning I read an article in The Irish Times by the director of the Dublin Region Homeless Executive on volunteers. I was very disappointed with the language used in it. Basically, it states that it is not helpful for volunteers to be giving out food and clothes to the homeless. I do not believe such comments are helpful to volunteers who give up their time in the evening, after their own day's work, and leave their families to give out food and clothes. The article made me think of all the volunteers who, over the years, came into the hospitals in which I worked. They got to know the long-term homeless, who were mainly men, and paid attention to the type of clothes they liked to wear and the football teams they supported, etc. One man who I still visit insisted he only liked to wear a certain brand. Volunteers, when going through buckets of clothes, took the time to ensure that those men had something they liked wearing and not just anything out of a bag. They paid attention to their personalities and who they are. Such gestures might not break the long-term cycle of homelessness but I do not think that is what volunteer groups are trying to do. They are trying to show a level of human empathy and compassion to people who are on the streets and in long-term homelessness.

Years ago, in the lead-up to Christmas, I remember collecting black bags full of presents for people in two hostels where I worked. I remember two women skiving loads of them down the side of a sofa. I asked them about three bottles of perfume that were in a packet but they did not want them. They said that they could not afford presents for their loved ones and that they had been used to the cold and living in those standards but that the stockings, gloves, scarves, perfumes and gift sets that they were receiving served them psychologically because they were able to give them to their loved ones at Christmas to show them that they were thinking of them.

Volunteers are hugely important. It may be that they are never in a position to break the cycle of homelessness, but that is up to us, as legislators, Dublin City Council and various other organisations. To dismiss the work of volunteers is unacceptable. Instead we should be thanking them.

The instinctive nastiness of the Taoiseach's politics has been laid bare over the past 48 hours and the Government sank to new depths when issuing rhetoric around the homelessness crisis. I think every Member of the House would agree that homelessness is the biggest issue this country must face. When dealing with a serious issue, one would assume no Minister or Government would engage in victim blaming. However, over the weekend and this week, we have had the suggestion that our homelessness levels are normal, last night it was suggested that talking about homelessness is bad for our international reputation, and now we have the deplorable suggestion that homelessness is down to the bad behaviour of those who are homeless. This is the inevitable consequence of the nasty rhetoric of defending those who get up early in the morning and saying that, for those who are vulnerable, it is in a way their own fault at the end of the day. It is outrageous. Rather than having a Government which holds its hands up and states it is doing its best but that it is a difficult and complex problem on which it will work harder and better to find solutions, we are told that our homelessness rates are normal if one considers the international comparators and that we might have a better international reputation if we stopped talking about it. Inevitably, other people working in the sector are saying that it is their own fault at the end of the day.

The rhetoric from the communications unit is outrageous. What is worse about the unit is that €5 million is nothing compared to the price of demonising the most vulnerable people in this country of ours. I genuinely do not want this to turn into party political football.