Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I agree with the last point. Of course we have to put systems in place and built a sustainable migration system. I assure the Deputy a huge amount of work is under way daily to make that happen. We will have another Cabinet committee on migration tomorrow. The Minister for integration, the Minister for Justice and others are working intensively on this.

I am very proud of their work. I do not say this to be argumentative in what is possibly our last exchange but there is sometimes an inconsistency in the approach we take to this. This is not aimed directly at Deputy McNamara but when I go around the country or when I come into this House, people say to me that we cannot keep using hotels and taking public facilities out of use. Then, all of a sudden we have a significant reduction in the number of people from Ukraine in accommodation. We are spending a lot of money on hotels and bed and breakfast accommodation, so we say that we will give some of the hotels back and put them back into public use. Then people say, and I understand this on a human level and see it in my own constituency, that they do not want us to move the people from their community. As the Taoiseach, I have to try to have an overview here. The reality is that we are trying to make sure we have a sustainable accommodation supply and do not have a situation-----

See this speech in context