Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

We welcome that. We will not get back into the tweets and will leave them for another day, but I will get back into realpolitik. The Minister says his Department will not take away housing or shelters, but this is what is happening in Cashel. Officials from the Minister's Department told me they want accommodation and their duty is to get it from wherever, whoever and whatever, so we need to be very realistic. I salute the people who took Ukrainians into their houses and homes. It was the spirit of the meitheal and the welcoming Irish. However, this is a situation where greedy developers are buying up premises, some of which are in very bad condition, and getting a fortune. Some have got €15 million. Above all, we must have a cut-off measure as we cannot continue this. I am told 800 international applicants are coming in per week. We just cannot cope with that. We have 12,500 homeless ourselves and many of those are children. In this case in Cashel we have - I will not say "evicted" because it is too emotive a word - removed persons who were in the hostel. I know that one of them has mental health issues - she is a constituent of mine whom I helped- and had been hoping to be there for a number of weeks. There were many others. They have been moved out with no place to go.

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