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

I thank the Deputy. We are proceeding on a phased basis. The initial phase involves hotel accommodation. Two thousand five hundred rooms have been procured in recent weeks. We are now moving on to the pledges and seeking in the first instance to activate the vacant houses or fully vacant units into which people can move quickly. Following on from that will be shared accommodation in people's homes. There will be an element of vetting where a child is going into a home. We are engaging with a view to considering larger buildings, perhaps institutional buildings, including those of the HSE and religious institutions. We have asked local authorities to identify large vacant buildings that may not be in their ownership but that are in their areas and that could be renovated, as the Deputy stated. However, if the numbers increase, we will need more. The Government and Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage are considering the various options. We do not have the answers right now but we are working on them. We are asking everyone to work with us and to be reassured that we are very much focused on delivering for potentially large numbers.

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