Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail)

That is great. I thank the hosts for the really good-quality product they provide. It is great, and people do come to Ireland for the céad míle fáilte, which is staying in an Irish home and meeting Irish people. Although I am a Dub, I am very familiar with beyond the Pale, the west and Munster. I am very conscious of rural towns, for example, Youghal, which gave up its hotel accommodation to respond to a humanitarian need and has been left with very little tourist accommodation as a consequence. If it was not for people like Irish Host Community and its members stepping in, Youghal as a tourist town would be really struggling. I genuinely do get that.

I am disappointed to hear how hosts are being responded to by local authorities and the Department. It is just not good enough; it really is not. The legislation is coming into effect next May. It will only apply to properties that are going to be a full property, so the vast majority of Irish Host Community members probably will not fall into that category but, either way, they should be getting better engagement. We need to write to the Minister about this concern to ask him to send an interim circular to each of the 31 local authorities informing them of what they need to be informing their members.

That being said, I am a Dub. There are over 16,000 people in emergency homeless accommodation today. Far too many of them are children and far too many of them are in my constituency. It is destroying lives and it is avoidable. Threshold made a point about the lack of accurate data. I did a desktop search on how many properties are available for short-term let in Dublin today. I got a couple of different numbers but, at a minimum, there are 10,000 properties and a maximum of over 19,000 properties. If we take it that 16,000 individuals are in emergency accommodation, they could be taken out of homeless accommodation overnight, if the regulations only applied to Dublin and not the rest of the country; not Lahinch, Milltown Malbay, Youghal, Killeagh or any of those rural towns.

I really welcome Threshold's support for this legislation. I will be doing everything I can to make sure that we pass it because we have to pass it. We have to pass it and implement it. We cannot continue with the situation in Dublin. Schools in my constituency cannot recruit teachers. There are nurses working in the Rotunda, the Mater and Temple Street hospitals, looking after the most vulnerable of our citizens, who are commuting two or three hours either way and doing ten- or 12-hour shifts. That is not sustainable. Young Garda recruits are coming out of Templemore and we are trying to recruit an extra 5,000 gardaí. I absolutely reject Sinn Féin's mantra that our housing crisis is a consequence of failed housing policy; its objections to housing are a greater contributor to that crisis. We need to get this legislation through and we need to make it work, so that where there is a real need and where there are real homes that can be used on a long-term basis and are suitable for it, such homes are made available. Where there are not and where there are alternatives, these should be supported too.

The committee has a real job to do in bridging that gap because legitimate questions are being asked by the hosts, which are not being answered by those who should be answering them. I have a question for the Threshold representatives on the numbers. Are they surprised? Is that their sense of it in Dublin, particularly?