Peadar Tobin

I think we should be transparent and open and provide information to citizens and policymakers.

I think misinformation excels in the petri dish of a vacuum of information.

And hiding information from people only makes them suspicious

only pushes them towards the ne'er-do-wells who do want to push a racist agenda in this country.

It's impossible for policymakers to make proper policy if information has been withheld from them.

And we do have a housing crisis in this country.

It's important for us to be able to analyze

All the elements of that particular crisis, the crisis is as a result of the government's not building enough houses.

But there is significant demand on houses at the moment.

And some of that demand is coming from people who are moving into the country.

It's a basic economics.

It's basic physics.

And that if you bring 70,000 people into a country every year and you don't build the infrastructure for them, well, then you're going to increase rents, increase prices and make it more difficult to get access to those homes.

So there's two things there.

There is disharmony already in this country and I think a large part of that disharmony is coming from a lack of information and there is this kind of

attitude amongst some people and some of the political parties that actually it's better that people don't know what's happening in the country and it's better that we keep the information from them.

And that has proven to be incorrect.

The more transparency and honesty we can have with people, the better in relation to this.

Also, in terms of policy, yes, these individuals have achieved all they need to achieve to get on the housing waiting list.

But there are questions for policymakers in terms of, let's say, habitual residency.