Conor Sheehan (Limerick City, Labour)
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I want to ask the Minister an additional question in relation to the tenant in situ scheme. In my city of Limerick, we have reached 1,000 applications submitted since the commencement of the scheme in March 2023.

A lot of those applications are paused at the moment, particularly in relation to the issue with refurbishments. Based on what the Minister was saying, I understand this whole figure of €60,000 for refurbishments and while I agree with him about that being unacceptably high, with this reallocation, is there any way some additional funding could have been moved into tenant in situ, even to create a small fund for refurbishments? Local authorities have huge numbers coming into their homeless action teams. In Limerick alone, millions of euro are being spent every year on hotels and we are getting absolutely nothing in return for that. The local authority is spending about €10 million at the moment. At least, if the local authority could buy a house or acquire a unit, they would then acquire an asset.