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

I thank the Deputies for their questions. Deputy Tóibín said I was looking a little tired today. If I am, it is probably because I got back from Wexford at 1 a.m. and then had to be in Blanchardstown at 8 a.m., but this comes with the job. The rows in Government are much exaggerated. To answer the Deputy's question, though, which is a serious and valid one, and I do want to answer it seriously, the situation is this. As a country, in the past two years, we have welcomed nearly 100,000 people from Ukraine. There may have been another 20,000 people from other parts of the world seeking international protection. In almost all cases, we have provided accommodation, food, heat, light, education, healthcare and income or a job.

I am very proud that as a country we have done that in the past two years, notwithstanding the difficulties this has caused and the enormous challenges and costs. When we look back on this period of history, being a small country that took in 100,000 Ukrainians will be something we should and will be proud of. What is becoming increasingly apparent to everyone now, though, if it has not been the case for a long time, is that while there is no limit on the compassion of the Irish Government and people, there is a limit on our capacity. We are very much at this point now. We just do not know if we will be in a position to provide accommodation and all these additional supports for another 30,000 to 50,000 people if this number were to arrive over the next year. Based on current numbers, it would not be far off this figure. We just do not know if we will be able to provide that level of accommodation.

As the Tánaiste said the other day, there are now many secondary movements. Ukrainians who have been living for months in other parts of western Europe are relocating to Ireland. It is a long-standing issue with international protection. I refer to people who have been living safely in other parts of western Europe for some time then coming to Ireland and claiming asylum. Some of this is linked to the fact that we have a better offering in Ireland than would be the case in Northern Ireland, Britain, France or other countries not too far from us. This is why we must review the situation, and we are doing this now. The overall intention is to bring the offering we have more in line with other western European countries. This work is now under way. No Government decision or agreement has been made in this regard, but this work is very much in train. Of course, when we look at those things, we must adjust for the fact that the cost of living is higher in Ireland and that we have a very serious housing shortage, which we do not wish to make worse. It is not that we are just going to take the average of what is done in other countries. We will have to tailor it for the very real situation we face here now.

Deputy Boyd Barrett said that the majority of people who end up in emergency accommodation are there due to eviction or receiving notices to quit. I do not think this is quite correct. It is closer to being in or around one-third of people, with other reasons accounting for the other two thirds. We do, though, need better data in this area. We fund prevention services in this regard because it is much better to prevent people from becoming homeless than it is to have to try to find emergency accommodation and then also find accommodation for them after that. We certainly encourage people to engage with Threshold because many notices to quit are invalid and rejected when challenged. We are also really scaling up the tenant in situscheme, for which, in fairness, Deputy Boyd Barrett was a very strong advocate some time ago. We have about 3,000 of these purchases in process now. This is where the council or an approved housing body buys a house if a landlord is selling up. This allows the social housing tenant to move from being in a HAP tenancy to a much more secure, permanent social housing tenancy. We have also increased the social housing income limits. I am sure we will do so again.

Deputy Cian O'Callaghan mentioned some of the reports that would indicate the impact Government schemes can have on house prices. There are different reports that state different things. I have seen reports contradicting each other regarding whether the help-to-buy scheme has led to house prices increasing. I have not seen the specific report the Deputy referred to. New builds are more expensive than older homes for many reasons. They are built to a much higher standard. Building costs have also soared. Anyone building a house will be able to tell you how much building costs have soared in the last year or so. Equally, anyone who has bought an old house and had to renovate it and bring it up to the modern standard will tell you how much that costs.

Speaking of different reports and analyses, I saw a very interesting graph that was put together by the gentleman who is behind the very interesting Crazy House Prices account on Instagram, which many people follow. It looked at the ratio of house prices to incomes. This person would not be a supporter of Fine Gael, but he produces very good testimony and evidence. I thought this was very interesting, because what matters most in terms of house prices is not just the cost figure but the relativity to income and also interest rates. What this graph showed was that if we were to go back to the 1970s or 1980s, it was possible then to buy a house for roughly four times the average income. This ratio really soared in the 1990s to about eight times the average income. It then peaked 20 years ago, at around eight times the average income, and since then it has gone up and down a bit, but is more or less 7.4 times the average income. It is probably falling again now since incomes are rising faster than house prices. This was, therefore, an interesting analysis to see. I refer to seeing that the peak in this ratio was reached in 2020 and since then it has kind of stayed around seven to eight times average incomes. This kind of surprised me, given much of what I hear in the House.

Deputy Paul Murphy raised the issue of the safety of international protection applicants. Obviously, the Government has a duty of care when it comes to providing safety when it comes to providing safety for people in any State-funded facility. We do take measures to try to ensure this safety. We also have a specific fund to try to recognise local communities that have accepted international protection applicants and Ukrainian people into their areas. I might provide more detail in this regard to the Deputy in correspondence.

See this speech in context