Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions Dail Éireann — 2025-12-18 ============================================================ Cian O'Callaghan (SD), Dublin Bay North There will be more children spending Christmas in homeless emergency accommodation this year than ever before in the history of the State. When Fine Gael entered office, there were 641 children in homeless emergency accommodation. That was too high. There are now 5,247 children who will spend this Christmas without a home. This has a detrimental impact on each and every child involved. It can often mean missing key developmental milestones. Yet, the Tánaiste did not even acknowledge the damage homelessness does to children. I ask him to acknowledge the damage being done by his Government to children in homelessness. Does he not see that damage? Next year, will the number of children in homeless emergency accommodation grow even further, to record levels again, or will the Government reverse the trend? Can the Tánaiste tell us that the Government is going to reverse this? --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-12-18/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:29+00:00 Sitting date: 2025-12-18