She was talking about the numbers arriving in European countries. When you compare those to the numbers arriving in Libya’s neighbouring countries, you can see why she said that.

1122 The International Organisation for Migration has appealed for more funding to help repatriate migrants fleeing Libyan violence. Spokeswoman Jemimi Pandya said the IOM has had to “dramatically reduce the number of people we can evacuate a day from the height of 6,000 a day to an absolute bare minimum.”

1126 The IOM said it was only able to repatriate 20 people a day and needed $160m (£100m) to continue its work. “The crisis shows no signs of abating and thousands of migrants are fleeing the country on a daily basis,” said Ms Pandya.

You are either thinking that the new kind of arrivals can afford the present houses, as much as property laws for extra-communitary people allows, or idiotically suggesting that:
– the government buys all such properties at market value, out of my taxes, to fit all this population in. Out of the question.

– Owners are forced to take them in. Out of the question.

-Outright expropriation for this purpose. Out of the question.

Not to mention the effect on property prices, if what you idiotically suggest, is ever slightly considered and speculated upon.

Also, official population density statistics are always calculated by land area, and not by empty dwellings. Because if your brain may arrive to that, but I doubt, people do not live only in houses but need open spaces, surely not fields filled with a never ending flow of migrants. If that does not matter for you, it matters for the stra-majority of the maltese, a public opinion of which Minister Carm, a moderate but surely not a law-robot where national interest and limits are concerned, is very much aware of.

So even if the EU buys them all itself(highly improbable) for a never ending flow of migrants, it still remains, out of the question.

It appears that government involvement is limited to processing customs documentation and relaying messages about vessels in distress, which could bypass government altogether given that Malta is not involved in any military operation.

A fundraising drive managed by the Civil Protection Department was initiated some weeks ago. Aside from that, there has been no indication that government has taken any other initiative.

In view of this, one can hardly say that Malta is ‘full’. In fact we have so many empty dwellings that any European country can raise the argument that Malta is under-populated relative to its potential housing unts. The current housing glut would hardly justify Malta’s claim for aid.

It seems we have been building all these apartments in expectation that they will be filled up with sub-Saharan Africans and north African refugees. Presumably MEPA had that in mind when it issued all those permits for new apartments enough to make a ghost town.