Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions Dail Éireann — 2026-03-25 ============================================================ Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central Certainly, as I said, this is an issue I am going to deal with personally, as Taoiseach, with the Minister, Deputy Foley, the Minister of State, Deputy Higgins, and others, including the Minister for Health. It needs an integrated response, without question. We certainly will provide the necessary funding but, again, we have to get the design and the structures right. In my view, there is funding available within housing in a lot of instances but it cannot be that we just pass it over to the local authority to deal with. It is not a sustainable or proper response to say it is somebody else's problem. There have been capacity issues within section 39 bodies in terms of dealing with this housing and residential issue. We need to engage with the different authorities and bodies responsible and get moving on it. We must engage proactively with local authorities to say we want particular cases dealt with and particular priorities set. That needs to be done in a proactive way as opposed to dealing with an issue when it becomes an emergency. --- 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/2026-03-25/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:47+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-03-25