Oireachtas members sleeping in their cars due to a lack of hotel accommodation in Dublin is not a widespread phenomenon, Taoiseach Micheál Martin has said.
It follows a report in a newspaper that an Oireachtas member from the west of Ireland said he slept in his car after he was unable to find a room.
The unnamed politician told the Irish Daily Mail he slept in his car twice after repeated attempts to find a place to stay failed.
Mr Martin said that there are pressures on accommodation due to a rebound in tourism and efforts to accommodate Ukrainian refugees.
Minister for Housing Darragh O'Brien said he was not aware of the case.
Mr O'Brien told RTÉ's Today with Claire Byrne that instances like this have not been brought to his attention before.
The minister said many hotels are contracted in the short term to accommodate people from Ukraine and he accepted it might be difficult to find accommodation in the city centre for €200.
However, he added that accommodation may have been available further out of the city.
Senator Eugene Murphy said he empathised with the Oireachtas member in the report because he has had to do the same thing twice recently.
Mr Murphy said he has never slept in his car inside the gates of Leinster House but he knows of one person who has.
"I did think about sleeping in my office one time but I felt that wouldn't be a proper thing to do," he told Today with Claire Byrne.
Mr Murphy said he was successful in getting a room one night in the last three weeks and when he tried to book a room in the same hotel this week and next week, he was told there was "not a chance".
A number of TDs and senators from rural areas are affected by this issue, he said.
He said that he would not pay over €200 for a hotel room on "point of principle" and admitted he did not extend his search for accommodation to B&Bs or further out of the city centre.
The Fianna Fáil senator said members of the Oireachtas are reluctant to talk about the issue because their challenges are "very, very small" compared to the problems that other people face.
"I wouldn't even mention this to the minister or the department," he said.
"I mean, it's up to us to sort this out ourselves. We are legislators and we have to deal with housing legislation and I don't think it would look very well to start whinging and complaining."
