Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

We will bring forward the White Paper following the budget. Elements of it are relevant to decisions taken in the budget so we made a determination to hold back until after the budget. Significant work has been done on the revised draft. We hope to be able to publish it soon after the budget.

I absolutely agree with the Deputy on the system we have to use at the moment. Every European country is facing what we know is the biggest movement of people since the Second World War. No European country is equipped to deal with this movement with ready accommodation for people. Other European countries have a surplus of traditional accommodation that we do not have, particularly in view of the real pressure on housing right now. In order to meet our legal obligations but also the obligations the vast majority of us feel we need to undertake, we had to look at what is available us, namely, the use of private sector accommodation. That said, we have made use of pledged accommodation or vacant homes to house 13,000 people. That is a significant number. It is just short of 20% of the number of people we are accommodating on the Ukraine side. We brought forward the modular programme slower than we would have liked, but there are now more than 800 people living in modular accommodation. The lessons from undertaking the modular programme will be valuable for local authorities and approved housing bodies going forward in the context of looking at new ways to address the wider crisis in housing. The secondary benefit of going with the modular pilot was always seeing if we could deliver significant amounts of accommodation at speed and scale.

Regarding budget 2024, my understanding is that like last year, there will be a non-core fund specifically for responding to the war in Ukraine and the wider migration crises. That is important because we are entering the third year in which this has been taking place. It is still a highly unusual situation we are facing in needing to accommodate so many people. As we know, hopefully once the war ends, significant numbers of Ukrainians will seek to return home. With regard to putting it as permanent lines in budgets, I think the approach adopted up to this point has been preferable. However, those decisions are above my paygrade in a way in that they are decided in the Departments and Finance and Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform.