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

I believe that the point about Baggot Street hospital has been addressed on many occasions. Baggot Street Hospital is not fit for human habitation right now. A very major and a very long-term piece of work has to be done in order to make it fit for habitation. That may well happen - I would love to see it happen - but it will not deliver accommodation in the short term. My focus has had to be on the short term because of the very immediate needs of the people we need to accommodate, the 189 who are not accommodated today. The reason we are in this situation is that, as we know, we have a housing crisis in this country so we did not have an available stock of accommodation like other EU member states did and we had to rely predominantly on the private sector. I do not like being in that position - the Government does not like being in that position - but that is a reality. For whatever reason, the private sector in certain sectors has made decisions to take in international protection applicants or to take in beneficiaries of temporary protection, and we did not have any more international protection accommodation.

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