Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We know hotels are not the answer.

Every time an individual case has come to us, my officials and I have worked to help people in such circumstances. Let us continue to do that because that is the way to get a resolution for the people concerned.

We are not knocking people off the housing lists either. It is not manipulation. There are qualifying criteria that have to be observed. We talk about things like overtime but in some instances overtime is a permanent payment which is a different way of increasing a salary without calling it an increase. There are different payment schemes in operation in different companies and organisations. When that happens there should be a readily available, affordable scheme for the person concerned to move into, but let us not pretend, as a group of politicians, that we are dealing with these problems in a normal, functioning or stable housing market. We are not. We are playing catch up, big time, from years of massive undersupply. As we do that we face the incredible pressures we see in our society at the moment. Some people are in emergency accommodation or cannot qualify for social housing, while others cannot get their deposit together and are under great pressure meeting their rent payments. We are trying to manage the incredible challenges we have while also increasing supply because fundamentally that is the solution to 95% of the problems that confront us at the moment in respect of housing, homes and shelter. An affordable scheme is on the way and money is available for it, which is important.

On the Deputy's proposals, we have provided extra resources for the local authorities through the place finder service. We are putting extra resources into the Dublin Regional Homeless Executive. We also have the report from the executive and its recommendations. We have vacancy teams on the ground in each local authority looking at vacant properties. Just because something is vacant it does not mean we can go and grab it. It is not that easy. However, I will ask Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council how many compulsory purchase orders it has issued over the course of the last 12 months and the number of vacancies it has identified. The council provided numbers at the housing summit in January. If the Deputy is convinced of this number of properties, let us see what is actually happening on the ground in the local authority area.

There is a proposal for social and affordable housing in Shanganagh. Funding is not the issue, nor is securing agreement from my Department. We need to make sure the plan is robust and will work. We have received the plan and we are going through it. That is what we are doing at the moment and we can then move forward with it.