Jim O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay South, Fianna Fail)

I cannot because it is on the basis of what is being provided in respect of the price per person per night. I agree, however, with the Chair that far too much money being spent on this area is going to private commercial providers. This is why I am trying to develop State accommodation and why I bought Citywest. We cannot have it both ways. We cannot be critical of people for trying to start State accommodation, where the State will own the accommodation and it will be considerably cheaper for the State, and then say as well we do not want to have people going around using hotels. As I said earlier, I want to get out of renting hotels and accommodation centres. I want to get out of doing that. There are contracts in place. Some of them are being terminated. As I said too, however, this is an issue driven enormously by the numbers of people coming in claiming international protection. Significant numbers of people are being accommodated at present, some 33,000 people. We spent more than €1 billion on IPAS last year. The only way those figures for the cost will come down is if we try to reduce the number of people coming in claiming international protection.