She is not the first member of her party to play that game either.

We will continue to do everything we possibly can to deal with the housing crisis.

We are doing that, right across the board in terms of affordable housing and so on.

In regard to the humanitarian crisis that has been imposed upon Europe by Putin's appallingly immoral and illegal war-----

-----we will do everything we can to respond. We are responding and have responded as a country.

That is the language Deputy McDonald used.

First, I accept the Deputy’s bona fides. I received her letter yesterday and we will set in train that briefing she requested. Those countries closest to Ukraine have the highest numbers of Ukrainians coming in, namely, Czechia, Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Bulgaria and Latvia. Then you have Cyprus, Slovakia and Germany and then you have Ireland. We are taking the equivalent of about 1.2% of our population. Ireland is ahead of Austria, Finland, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, Slovenia, Belgium, Portugal, t…

I want to confirm the Deputy's points about those displaced over the weekend. That was disappointing. We do not want that situation to happen. All Ukrainian displaced persons and international protection, IP, applicants who were not accommodated over the weekend have now been contacted and offered accommodation. On the co-ordination front, I am aware of the issue because we met with the various groups over the summer. In my view, it has to be a cross-departmental and multi-departmental approach. That is why at Gove…

The death of anyone who is homeless is a tragedy. We extend our sympathies to the families concerned. I refer, in particular, to the deaths of people availing of homeless services. That matter is taken very seriously. The Deputy made a fairly bald statement in the context of offering an almost a direct juxtaposition between the numbers who have died and the position regarding homelessness. I do not think the figures bear that out. The Deputy quoted the Dublin Region Homeless Executive, DRHE, records. That organisat…

More than 20 years ago, we put a facility together that married health, housing and homelessness in a centre on Anderson's Quay in Cork city, where we gave access to primary care, mental healthcare and homeless services. What the Deputy is saying is not quite true.

It has long been recognised that people who are homeless for a variety of reasons-----

The Deputy introduced politics into this at the beginning, which is fine. I am just making the point that there is a multiplicity of reasons someone ends up homeless. We cannot generalise to the degree he is perhaps doing. Some, without doubt, have significant challenges as they become homeless, which can lead to increased morbidity and mortality. The point I am trying to make is that we have to bring the services to the homeless. That is what we need to do as a State, by intervening in a positive way in a person's…

What do we do? We bring the GP and the primary care service to the homeless centre or we at least provide it in an accessible way. In my view, there is a way of dealing with this, we are committed to doing it and unprecedented resources have been allocated to it. It was done very well during the Covid period, and we want to try to maintain that.

It is getting loans.

I stand open to correction, but the ban on exploration came about as a result of a recommendation from an Oireachtas committee of the previous Dáil.

The previous Oireachtas committee on climate decided, by majority vote if I am correct, that we would ban oil and gas exploration. Why? Because we wanted to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels. Why? Because we wanted to deal with the issue of climate change, because climate change is existential and we have to start. The danger was that if we kept on doing oil and gas exploration, we would reduce any incentives to move towards renewables. That has been the challenge. No one saw the war in Ukraine coming and the d…

The Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications, Deputy Ryan, with the Commission for Regulation of Utilities, EirGrid and the Department, form a board to try to accelerate the offshore wind initiative. The desire of the State is to do this in a controlled and organised way, not in a wild west sort of way. It is a natural resource. It is a national resource that belongs to the Irish people. This must be done in a programmed way. Many investors are in a hurry, and I understand that fully. I know what is…

-----that we need to up our pace and speed up the rate at which we can get these projects in place, certainly before the end of the decade. We have already increased our target in respect of offshore wind, hydrogen and so on for the end of the decade. Be in no doubt of the Government's commitment in respect of the funding. I think the Deputy is talking about loan facilities. Given the interest rates at which we were borrowing, if that is the same scheme, we did not need to borrow from the European Union facility wh…

Sorry?

They get to their destination.