Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy should go back to the person in question and tell them to go back to the council because the funding is there. I do not know the specifics about the house but that is not on. Very significant capital funding has been given to local authorities to repair housing and vacant properties. Due to a very strong initiative taken by the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, local authorities have brought back 6,000 vacant local authority housing units for people on the social housing list in the nearly two years since the Government came in. That is a fact. There will be a further 2,000 this year. Some 35,000 houses were commenced between March 2021 and March 2022. That shows that the emphasis on housing is working. Covid-19 hit us in 2020 and 2021. We were shut down completely for nearly four months in 2021 and four months in 2020. That slowed us down. There is €4 billion allocated for housing per annum.

It is wrong to juxtapose the Ukrainian situation with the housing situation. Some 25,000 Ukrainians have come here because there is an unprecedented war. It is unprecedented since 1942. I saw on television the other night that a man lost his wife and three-month-old baby. He went out to the shop, came back and they were dead. That is what people are fleeing. The UN has said that it is the biggest humanitarian crisis we have witnessed since the Second World War. Close to 5 million refugees have flowed into Europe. Some 16,000 have been accommodated in Ireland, with 25,000 in total. Some are in private accommodation with Ukrainian families. The vast bulk are in hotels and various other types of accommodation. Thousands of Irish people have pledged homes. The pledges are being processed right now. The vast bulk of refugees have been accommodated in hotels and other types of accommodation. That is the truth of the matter. We have to be very clear about it. It is not a case of one or the other, nor should anybody in the House try to present it as one or the other. I do not think that is fair. It is not the right approach because those are not the facts.

The vast majority of the Irish people want to do the best in the terrible wartime situation we are in because of an extraordinarily cynical, barbaric strategy pursued by Vladimir Putin. He is not just attacking people. He is deliberately creating a migration crisis by terrorising neighbourhoods and bombing residential areas to terrorise people into leaving. He is creating a food crisis as well and he has created an energy crisis as part of his war effort. We have to be strong and stand up to that. We are not a military power. The one great strength we have is humanitarian capacity. That is what that is about. On the housing front, I assure the Deputy that will do everything we can to bring more vacant properties back. If the Deputy has other examples, I ask him to bring them to me.

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