Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy is right to say we can learn from other countries but we should not be naive about what things look like in other countries either. Anyone who has walked the streets of Paris or Marseilles will see the kind of homelessness problem that exists there and how much worse it has got in the past ten or 20 years. I acknowledge the Deputy does not think there is any quick fix to these things and nor do I. A number of measures are required and there are many in place already. Let us not forget all new tenancies are now tenancies of unlimited duration and any tenant who is being served a notice to terminate has a period of up to six months, in some cases, to find a new place to live.

I acknowledge how difficult that can be in some cases.

I hear the same issues about students struggling to find accommodation in my constituency office. Deputy Bacik said she often checks daft.ie. It is a good website, though it is only one website. I checked digs.ie this morning. It has a large number of digs available, which is an option for some people. Student accommodation services in the universities have lists of rooms available, running to the hundreds in many cases.

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