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

I agree with much of what the Deputy said. We have to remember we are rebuilding our international protection system in real time. For years we were not getting anywhere close to the European average for international protection applicants. Since 2022 we have been getting the average, but our system was not built for those numbers. We are having to rebuild the processing system. The Minister, Deputy McEntee, has done really important work. In my Department, we are rebuilding the accommodation system. It is important to note that prior to the comprehensive accommodation strategy being published, we had a significant number of male international protection applicants sleeping rough in our streets, from Christmas into March. Since then, more than 1,000 additional male applicants have been offered accommodation. There are still some people sleeping rough. We have not solved this problem yet, but we have been able to bring more than 1,000 people into the system, the vast majority of whom were sleeping rough between December and March. That is a significant achievement.

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