Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I want to repeat the point about the extra accommodation that has become available since Tuesday in terms of the emergency contingency capacity. It has doubled for families who present in emergency out of hours.

It is reassuring that not all of the accommodation that has been made available was used last night. Only one of the new additional contingency units was used to accommodate a family. The additional accommodation were available and all the agencies knew this. There was real difficulty on Tuesday, as I have already acknowledged, for a variety of reasons including exceptional booking levels in hotels.

I spoke to the Minister this morning and his goal is clearly to move families out of commercial hotels and bed and breakfast accommodation. I have already outlined the huge range of initiatives he has undertaken in terms of family facilities. The aim of those initiatives is to make sure that more appropriate accommodation is available for families that present in this situation and have previously been housed in hotels and bed and breakfast accommodation. The budget has been made available, as the Deputy is well aware. A variety of funding mechanisms are in place for buying up more homes. There is a €70 million fund with the Housing Agency to buy houses that are available and are considered suitable. Each local authority has been asked to identify vacant properties. That is a complex situation in terms of who owns the properties, access to them, legal issues and other restrictions on bringing them back into use. Where they belong to local authorities, they of course can be brought back into use.

Every effort is being made to ensure that families get accommodation through the use of the housing assistance payment, HAP, through social builds and through encouraging private supply. All of those initiatives will come more and more into play. I already have given the details of the increase of 26% in construction that is under way. An increased number of planning applications also have been submitted. This will ensure that by the end of this year we will see a fairly dramatic increase in supply. It is a very challenging situation. Every resource that is necessary is being provided at a national budgetary level and for local authorities.

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