Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am sorry to report back to the Minister and her colleagues that the experience I have seen in Donegal and across the country of how the Government has handled the challenge of refugees and asylum seekers has been nothing short of shambolic. I give the example of a national school in my constituency. I still find it utterly shocking how the situation was handled. Sessiaghoneill National School saw an increase in pupil numbers in October 2022 of 52. The numbers rose from approximately 152 to 204, which was a substantial increase of one third. The new pupils were the children of refugees and asylum seekers. The school was welcoming, with wonderful support given to the children. I am glad to say they flourished in that environment. However, because the children were not enrolled before the deadline of 30 September, they received no financial support. The school staff were repeatedly in contact with the Department of Education asking for the same support per capitafor the new pupils as it receives for every other child. The staff pointed out that the school was only days over the deadline and these were exceptional circumstances. Their requests were ignored again and again. It got to the point that the school's funding was down by €30,000. I raised its situation in this House as a Topical Issue and one to one with the Minister. A solution was never found. Here was a school that provided a warm welcome and an environment of support for those children and their families and it was down €30,000 due to the wilful neglect of the Department and the refusal of the Minister to allow them to be supported on exceptional grounds. That is no way to treat people.

When I look across Donegal, I see there are now more than 7,000 Ukrainian refugees and almost 2,000 asylum seekers accommodated in the county. In most instances, that has been done with the support of the community. People's goodwill was thrown back in their faces. There has been an impact on tourism, with half of hotel beds in the county now taken up in accommodating people. In a county that has economically struggled, opportunistic investors are securing buildings, some their own and some from others, and providing those buildings to the Department. I do not blame the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, for this. He was abandoned by the rest of the Cabinet and left on his own to deal with the problem. There was no co-ordinated approach with housing, health, education, social services and so on. None of that happened. It was all left to the Minister and his officials. They were put in crisis mode looking to find buildings. It was a complete disservice.

Donegal has taken more refugees and asylum seekers per capitathan any other county in the State. I will not for one moment stand for anybody questioning the calibre or decency of our people when they ask genuine questions, like people did in the school to which I referred. There are people in communities asking legitimate questions such as how the extra responsibility will be sustained if they already cannot get an appointment with their GP. People cannot get their children into the national school because there is a queue for places. Was any research done on that? There was none. TDs and councillors only found out what was happening after it did - in some instances, after asylum seekers were placed in temporary emergency centres and, in other instances, days before they arrived. This left us at the front line of the absolute outrage in our communities at how people were treated. Their goodwill was taken for granted again and again.

The Government must accept that its handling of this issue has been shambolic.

It has abandoned the Minister, Deputy Roderic O'Gorman, to try to handle it all on his own. Now there is clear anger all across the country, whereby people who do not have not a racist bone in their bodies and who say they responded to the original crisis in Ukraine are now asking questions again and again. A small minority of our people are racist and they are taking advantage of this but the Government's handling of this in communities is playing into their hands. Please listen to people like me who have stood up for the underprivileged and disadvantaged all my political life. I do not have a racist bone in my body. I am an internationalist person. I am telling the Government that this is being handled appallingly. Good people have been burnt badly by all of this experience. The Government needs to rebuild those relationships, listen to the people and make changes now

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