Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael)
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523. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth the number of hotels or accommodation centres housing Ukrainian refugees that have not been paid or have outstanding payments pending from his Department; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [59530/22]

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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650 providers are currently in contractual arrangements with my Department to provide short-term accommodation to Beneficiaries of Temporary Protection. Over €50m has been paid to date in November 2022 to these providers in respect of Ukraine accommodation and related costs. We have a considerable number of payments to process to year end given the scale of accommodation provision. This include many invoices which are not overdue and some which cannot yet be paid due to incomplete documentation submitted.

I acknowledge however that regrettably there have been delays in processing payments due to scale of the accommodation response required. The Department has assigned additional resources to the task of paying these and will keep this under review. Almost 40% more invoices have been processed in the last week compared with the previous week. My officials are prioritising older invoices with a view to clearing that backlog in the coming weeks.

I trust this information is of assistance.