International Protection Bill 2026: Committee Stage (Resumed) and Remaining Stages
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-25
============================================================

Matt Carthy (SF), Cavan-Monaghan

The problem is that the facts do not back up what he is saying. He has spoken a number of times tonight about how he has increased State-provided accommodation. That was through the purchase of one centre. Let us be absolutely clear about it. It did not actually increase the capacity at all because it was a centre already in use at Citywest. I would argue that the way in which that purchase was handled vis-à-vis the local community and indeed the residents leaves a lot to be desired in respect of the potential success for future purchases.
If anyone was listening to the Minister, you would actually think, "Jesus, that is a lot of information". You get to know exactly how much someone is getting in contracts if it is over €20,000 but you do not actually get to know how much somebody is getting. You get to know what a company is getting. You do not necessarily know who the owner of that company is.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-02-25/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:41+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-25