TDs and senators are struggling to find hotel rooms with some resorting to sleeping in their cars and booking into rooms an hour outside the city.

One Oireachtas member anonymously told Extra.ie that he has slept in his car on two occasions after repeated attempts to find a place to stay failed.

“Even at 200 euro a night, people can’t seem to be able to get a room. In my own case, I went three weeks having to go up and down and that’s fine, but my commute is 300km in a round trip, which is long when you have a full day of sittings, committee meetings and maybe a parliamentary party meeting too,” he said.

He continued: “For two nights I slept in my car. I thought about staying in my office but I was worried about setting an alarm off in the middle of the night, so I decided to stay in the car instead. That was after exhaustive attempts to find a place.”

The Oireachtas member said the shortage of accommodation in the city is affecting members’ “lives and ability to work” but also said that he was embarrassed to talk about it as “families are finding it difficult to get housing.”

“I don’t want to be seen to whinging about it,” commented the member.

Elsewhere on District: Tax on vacant homes in Ireland could be introduced soon