Mr. Noel Waters:

We have looked into that, and continue to be open to that possibility. I have some knowledge of this from my time in charge of this area at the start. The Government decided then that we should have a balanced mix of options, commercial owners such as we have, hotels, hostels, guest houses and State-acquired accommodation. We were quite successful in acquiring State accommodation at the start of the process but we ran into difficulties almost immediately once we started to move people into provincial Ireland where we had ten properties. This featured at this committee in the mid-2000s, where it was not possible for us to place asylum seekers because we ran into very serious difficulties with communities.