Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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To be clear, I do believe that accommodation is the greatest outworking of the challenge we face in resect of migration. In case I misinterpreted the question, I absolutely believe that. I am making the point, though, that I do not think the conversation about migration should be limited to that because there are other issues around the efficiency of the system, which I think the Deputy and I, and most people, would share a view on in terms of the need for us to be more efficient in respect of processing times and the like.

There are a couple of parts to the question. The Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, has brought forward to Cabinet, and has received Cabinet approval for, a new accommodation framework. I am very pleased that in that it talks about not going into the town or village and taking the only hotel. That has caused massive social cohesion pressures. It is one thing if you are in a large urban area and there may be a number of options for a funeral reception, wedding, christening or tourism product. If a place only has one hotel and it is the last hotel in the town or village and all of a sudden it is taken out of circulation for tourism use, that causes a real problem. The new accommodation plan does commit to staying away from that sort of decision.

Second, because this all interplays, there are very many contracts that have been placed by the Department of integration around Ukrainian accommodation, so guesthouses, hotels and the like. Every day, on average, 15 people come to Ireland from Ukraine seeking accommodation but every day, on average, approximately 45 people from Ukraine are leaving State accommodation. We have been told, as a Government, by the Minister for integration that that means in the weeks ahead there should be guesthouses, hotels and other accommodation that is currently being used whose contracts may not need to be extended. I expect there to be a churn there in terms of potential facilities that were being used for the Ukrainian humanitarian response that may be able to go back into the community original use they had.

I will make one last point, which I think will answer the crux of the question. I expect the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, in the next few weeks to come to Cabinet with his first tranche of proposals around how he intends to develop, and seek the funding to develop, public-owned facilities.

I do not have the number in front of me but, at the moment, well over 90% of the accommodation we are using for migration is privately owned. We are going to see the first tranche in the coming weeks as to how the Minister intends to begin to alter the balance.