At the weekend, when asked to explain the spiralling homelessness figures, the Taoiseach blamed vulnerable migrants. He said homeless numbers are now heavily impacted by people seeking international protection. This, as the Minister knows, is not true. The biggest correlating factor in the context of rising homelessness in Ireland is not rising migration, it is Fine Gael in government. Every year for more than a decade, homelessness figures have increased. Nearly 14,500 people are now homeless, including almost 4,500 children. This is, of course, an indictment not of vulnerable migrants but of this Government and previous Governments.

People at home will be interested to know that people seeking international protection are not counted in the monthly homeless figures. They are not entitled to stay in emergency accommodation. Under this Government, they are not even guaranteed a bed or tent. In fact, this Government's treatment of international protection applicants is so appalling that the High Court has found it unlawful. However, that has not stopped the Taoiseach from trying to shift the blame from Government onto migrants. Saying that migrants are the cause of rising homelessness is a textbook dog-whistle. It validates and normalises the dangerous far-right narrative that migrants are the cause of the problems people are facing.

Yesterday, Mercy Law Resource Centre, which has expertise in housing law, issued a lengthy demolition of the Taoiseach's comments. It stated that the causes of homelessness are multifaceted and directly relate to decisions made by central and local government over many years. Does it concern the Minister that the Taoiseach's comments have had to be fact checked and dismantled by legal experts? Does it concern him that in the current climate of increased racism, arson, assault, threats and intimidation of migrants, the Taoiseach is seeking to blame them for the homelessness crisis?

Last week, the Minister gave an interview to The Sunday Times in which he lambasted his coalition partners for putting politics over policies. Is this not a clear example of that cynical style of politics? Facing a barrage of criticism, the Taoiseach's office released homeless figures for Dublin in July to try to back up his remarks. These do not tell the full story. The national figures for the second quarter of this year tell us that the biggest cause of homelessness is relationship breakdown, the second is receiving a termination notice in the private rental sector, the third is listed as "other" and the fourth is leaving direct provision, comprising a small fraction of the overall figures.

As Minister for integration, Deputy O'Gorman has not yet commented on this. Is he concerned about the impact of this kind of dog-whistling on migrants, many of whom are already living in fear? Would he like to use this opportunity to confirm that the Taoiseach's comments were shameful scapegoating of a vulnerable minority and were wrong?

I thank the Deputy for the question. For clarity, I spoke to media at some length about this on Monday, but I am very happy to restate what I said at that point. We have to be absolutely factual when we are dealing with these issues and are in a situation where we have a homelessness crisis, where many people are in really difficult situations, where we have a humanitarian response to the war in Ukraine and where we have seen increased level of international protection applicants.

The fact is that international protection applicants have no right to housing supports, the housing assistance payment, HAP, or to access homelessness services. Ukrainians, who are beneficiaries of temporary protection, have no right to housing supports, HAP or to access homelessness services. The very tenure of the approach of the Government, which was deliberately chosen at the start of this crisis, was that my Department would undertake the emergency response to the housing needs of those fleeing the war in Ukraine and seeking international protection here, and the Department of housing would continue its work in terms of focusing on the delivery of Housing for All, social housing and affordable rental and purchase. That is how things have worked.

Over the course of two years, my Department has been able to provide emergency accommodation for more than 100,000 people. That is a huge number. We are in the heat of this crisis now, but when we look back in subsequent years, we will acknowledge the scale of the response. It was enabled by the supportive communities all over our country.

I agree with the Taoiseach when he says that we should not blame vulnerable groups in our society for the pressures on housing. In Housing for All, we have set out our approach to increasing the number of units produced and available for housing every year. We achieved 32,700 units last year and are hoping to bring the number up to 40,000 this year. That is the way we will be able to address the homelessness crisis in our country.

The Deputy mentioned the challenges in my Department in terms of meeting the accommodation needs of international protection applicants. They remain acute. We have been found to be wanting and in breach of our legal obligations. That is something of which I am very conscious. I am working on the implementation of the new accommodation strategy, which is designed around a core of State-owned accommodation. The major problem with the system that I inherited is that it is 96% reliant on the private sector.

That is why the use of State-owned land has been so important in recent months. The fact that we are accommodating people on State-owned land in Trudder, Crooksling, Ballyogan and will be in the next few weeks in Thornton Hall is extremely important in meeting the immediate homelessness needs and being able to provide basic shelter for people when they are rough sleeping in the short term. However, in the long term, we need approved State-provided accommodation for the people we know will continue to seek international protection here in the future.

Since Deputy Harris became Taoiseach, there has been a dominant message from this Government trying to make the lives of international protection applicants as miserable as possible. The Government has announced plans to cut their meagre allowances and to charge them to stay in institutional settings. The Minister's Department is enforcing transfers from international protection applicant accommodation, thereby uprooting adults and children who have integrated into local communities. Meanwhile, efforts to evict people who have leave to remain from direct provision accommodation have been stepped up. The Taoiseach is now attempting to blame the very people who have been failed by the Government, the people the Minister just acknowledged, for the homelessness crisis. The cynical scrapping of the incitement to hatred laws can also be added to the list.

The Minister has not provided the promised State-run reception and integration centres we so desperately need. He has to decide whether he is happy to stand over the Taoiseach comments blaming migrants for the homelessness crisis. Will the Minister clarify if he does stand over those comments? What does he have to say about the matter?

No one is evicted from international protection accommodation. I want to make that clear. In a situation where people have status, they are entitled to the full range of supports we spoke about earlier that people in the international protection application process are not entitled to. When people get their status, they are entitled to the same set of rights and supports as every Irish citizen. We have put in place significant resources to help those who have status to move on because it is not good for anyone that they continue to live in institutional direct provision settings. That is not what anyone wants. Let me be clear, however; no one is evicted from those premises, even if they have leave to remain.

We have transferred people across our network. We have to be able to do that as we are under a great deal of pressure to ensure that we can offer accommodation to newly arrived people. We have to make changes. Working with the Peter McVerry Trust and other housing NGOs, we have put in place a network of supports and more than 4,500 people have successfully moved out of international protection accommodation and into the community since 2022.