Ms Oonagh Buckley:

When we call it emergency accommodation, what we are talking about is hotel rooms. It is not dissimilar to the way in which people who are homeless and who are Irish natives are accommodated. We have been consistent on the record saying it is a suboptimal approach to the housing of asylum seekers. However much one might criticise direct provision centres proper, they have facilities provided in them and they are a much better set-up in terms of people's capacities. Then, as we had to do for all of 2019, we had to rent hotel rooms and put people in them when they arrived in the country.

In terms of evaluation, they were procured under an expressions of interest process. The accommodation was assessed based on various norms. The persons running them would have had to meet requirements like having tax clearance and so forth. It was never the intention that they were going to be run like direct provision centres. It was only ever that we were effectively renting rooms in hotels. That is what emergency accommodation is.