Today I will raise the question of housing again with the Taoiseach. I have raised it with him and his colleagues in the Government many times and to be honest, it seems we are only paying lip service at this stage. We are in the middle of a housing crisis.

We hear from the Government about the many thousands of new homes that will be built every year but we are still are no better off when it comes to the number of people requiring houses or homes.

The war in Ukraine has had a devastating effect on the people of Ukraine and Ireland has once more risen to the challenge and taken in refugees in a time of need. Great effort continues to be made in housing, and also with the many thousands of refugees coming to our country from Ukraine. I completely support all the efforts that have been made to find accommodation for refugees from Ukraine. Why is the same effort is not being made to tackle the housing crisis here in Ireland? I have lost count of the number of times I have raised this issue in the House. Vacant properties are there and we are not availing of them. The biggest issue I deal with in my constituency office in Dundalk is housing. On a daily basis, new cases of homelessness are presented to me. The Government is failing on the issue.

I have called on the Government many times to look at the potential that vacant properties have in addressing the housing crisis. Only this week, I had to deal with a local constituent in the Carlingford area. She is a mother of four children who has been on the housing list for over eight years. She identified a property which is vacant and approached the council. She was subsequently told that the council does not have money or resources to refurbish the property. This is wrong. We are throwing money at every other problem, yet when it comes to refurbishing vacant properties, the council is saying it does not have the funding or resources. It is important that councils are supported in this. If it is the case that they are not being supported, they must be made accountable.

The price of rental property is going through the roof and those looking to buy property find it cannot be done. I have people coming to my constituency office who have been told by their landlord that they must vacate the property in three months' time. When they go to the council they are told to come back a week before they are evicted from their home. That is not right. These families have children. If they move to another area, they will have no access to transport. It is causing chaos. I am asking that we do the same for Irish people as we are doing for Ukrainians. I ask the Taoiseach to confirm that the same effort in providing badly-needed accommodation for Ukrainian refugees will also be made to fund and support local councils to refurbish and bring back into stock the many thousands of vacant properties that currently exist around the country.

The Deputy should go back to the person in question and tell them to go back to the council because the funding is there. I do not know the specifics about the house but that is not on. Very significant capital funding has been given to local authorities to repair housing and vacant properties. Due to a very strong initiative taken by the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, local authorities have brought back 6,000 vacant local authority housing units for people on the social housing list in the nearly two years since the Government came in. That is a fact. There will be a further 2,000 this year. Some 35,000 houses were commenced between March 2021 and March 2022. That shows that the emphasis on housing is working. Covid-19 hit us in 2020 and 2021. We were shut down completely for nearly four months in 2021 and four months in 2020. That slowed us down. There is €4 billion allocated for housing per annum.

It is wrong to juxtapose the Ukrainian situation with the housing situation. Some 25,000 Ukrainians have come here because there is an unprecedented war. It is unprecedented since 1942. I saw on television the other night that a man lost his wife and three-month-old baby. He went out to the shop, came back and they were dead. That is what people are fleeing. The UN has said that it is the biggest humanitarian crisis we have witnessed since the Second World War. Close to 5 million refugees have flowed into Europe. Some 16,000 have been accommodated in Ireland, with 25,000 in total. Some are in private accommodation with Ukrainian families. The vast bulk are in hotels and various other types of accommodation. Thousands of Irish people have pledged homes. The pledges are being processed right now. The vast bulk of refugees have been accommodated in hotels and other types of accommodation. That is the truth of the matter. We have to be very clear about it. It is not a case of one or the other, nor should anybody in the House try to present it as one or the other. I do not think that is fair. It is not the right approach because those are not the facts.

The vast majority of the Irish people want to do the best in the terrible wartime situation we are in because of an extraordinarily cynical, barbaric strategy pursued by Vladimir Putin. He is not just attacking people. He is deliberately creating a migration crisis by terrorising neighbourhoods and bombing residential areas to terrorise people into leaving. He is creating a food crisis as well and he has created an energy crisis as part of his war effort. We have to be strong and stand up to that. We are not a military power. The one great strength we have is humanitarian capacity. That is what that is about. On the housing front, I assure the Deputy that will do everything we can to bring more vacant properties back. If the Deputy has other examples, I ask him to bring them to me.

I have already put on the record my complete support for all the efforts that are being made to find accommodation for the refugees. That is not the problem. The problem I am talking about is with the local authorities. The vacant house to which I referred was left in perfect condition last October. It is now six or seven months later. A year ago, if I had asked the council what the problem was, it would have said it had no money. Now it is saying the problem is resources. Personally, I think the local authorities are not able to do this work. Perhaps somebody who knows something about business, like Michael O'Leary of Ryanair, should be put in there. I cannot understand it. Years ago, the councils had their own plumbers, electricians and everything else. They are doing absolutely nothing. The biggest problem is accountability. Where is the accountability for them? There is nothing. Council staff are civil servants who can fob people off. I know of a person whose mother and father threw them out of the house last week. The person was homeless. They were told by the council to go back and make up with their mother and father. When marriages break up, the husband and wife have to vacate the house. They go to the council to get put on the list. They are told that they cannot go on the list because they have accommodation or their name is already down. Excuse after excuse is being made. I am asking for solutions. The Government is doing a fantastic job with the Ukrainian refugees. I have no problem whatsoever with that. I have mothers coming to my office, with their children roaring and crying, who are looking for accommodation. We have to look after Irish and Ukrainian people. If the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform could find €3 billion last week to help out-----

Deputy, we are over time.

I am just saying we have problems in our own country. I ask that the Government help the Irish people as well.

We are going to do that. Fortunately, this year we have put €4 billion into a contingency fund in the budget for Covid for 2022. Some of that is now being used for Ukraine. The figure the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform used last week was an estimate of what it could be in 2023. We hope it is not and that the war will end. I accept the Deputy's bona fides and the merits of what he is saying in terms of vacant properties. I will ask the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage to meet the Deputy to discuss vacant properties in his area. We would like to find them, particularly local authority vacant properties. I assure the Deputy that we will do everything we can to get them repaired. I do not want any vacant properties hanging around the place. They should not be hanging around the place. That is why we had a special voids programme two years ago to get voids brought back into use for social housing, in particular. There is also the repair and lease scheme. On Tuesday, the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage brought a package to us that deals with repair and lease for non-local authority housing to get them brought back, and to do more on the voids in terms of the social housing list. We are also seeking to extend notice to quit periods, for example, to give greater time to tenants. The Deputy mentioned the case of people being evicted. We want to delay eviction as long as we possibly legally can. I thank the Deputy for raising the issue. I will ask the Minister to engage with him in terms of those vacant properties.