Mr. Noel Waters:

Essentially because there was no other option available to us to procure accommodation and services throughout the State on the basis of Government policy. We had looked at all the other options. We started out on the basis that when people arrived into the State, they were given supplementary welfare, accommodation and apartments and that very soon we had reached a crisis situation, which is not dissimilar to what we have at the moment. More people had been encouraged to come in and we found ourselves in a situation where people who had arrived to Ireland as protection applicants were living homeless in Merrion Square and the Phoenix Park. The Government decided to introduce a system of direct provision and dispersal. It also decided that when this happened there would be a mix of accommodation options comprising commercially run centres, State-owned accommodation and what were then known as flotels. The floating hotels were not sustainable and did not become an option. We went about giving effect to that Government decision and we managed to acquire some State properties but we ran into serious difficulties with other provision. The commercial sector, effectively, took up the slack in dealing with that.