When two teenage girls die in a fire in a derelict house, the first impulse of many is to look for somebody to blame. An immediate target, for instance, might be the Eastern Health Board. As the agency which is meant to be in touch with the homeless, why did it allow this to happen?
Yet that reaction is too simple for a problem as complex as the one raised by these tragic deaths.
One complication is that the term "homeless" is a gross oversimplification of the situation of young people living on the streets. Another is that life on the streets often meets the needs of young people - but in a distorted way and at a high price. Yet another is that it is all too easy to make glib assumptions about why these youngsters are on the streets in the first place.
The implication that homeless children - and at 16 these two girls were, legally, children - have no homes to go to is almost never correct. Usually they have homes to go to but stay out all the time or - and this may be the most common category of "homeless" child - some of the time because of the situation in the home.
That situation is often assumed to involve alcoholism or drug abuse by the parents, perhaps coupled with emotional, physical or sexual abuse of the children or their neglect. But that is too simple an assumption - and a grossly unfair assumption in the present case, as we know nothing of these girls' backgrounds.
Teenagers fall out with their parents for all sorts of reasons, sometimes ones which neither they nor their parents understand. Father Peter McVerry, who knows more about these teenagers than most, once likened it to a marriage breaking down over time without anyone being clearly to blame.
Such children may not leave home for good but are in and out of home. And when they are out of home, they are likely to spend the night on other people's floors, in squats or in night shelters, or accommodation provided by the regional health boards.
What adds a destructive element to this is the lure of life on the streets for children when they get over their initial fear of it. Life on the streets means a real danger of exploitation and drug abuse. But it also means freedom from the restraints of home, companionship with others in the same predicament and such "pleasures" as are provided by drink and drugs. Food is provided by various bodies which work with the homeless.
Groups who work with the homeless see it as a priority that children who leave home should be taken in hand by the social services before they experience any of the attractions which life on the streets may have.
This is where improvements are needed and long overdue. Youths who leave home need to be connected quickly to services which will look into their problems and enable them to deal with them constructively.
Too often, social workers have no resources with which to do these things. Voluntary organisations can do a great deal to help but they also lack sufficient resources.
Many who live this dangerous lifestyle have been in the care of the eight regional health boards. It is a continuing scandal that, all too often, this is the outcome of "care". Comprehensive after-care services are badly needed and it is the responsibility of the health boards and of the religious and other bodies who run residential care establishments to provide these.
However, it must be said again that there are no easy answers to the complex questions raised by the weekend tragedy. There are only difficult, partial answers and even these will only be found if the policy-makers and decision-makers go and talk to the social workers and child-care workers - both inside and outside the official system - who meet these young people every day.