Mr. Peter Doyle:

The issue of the larger scale camps in the Lebanon was raised. The situation there at present is that the Lebanese Government does not want those large-scale camps so it is limiting the types of accommodation that are available to refugees. For example, refugees could be staying in tented settlements and there is a maximum limit of 20 families per settlement. They are also staying in collective centres which could be farm buildings or rented buildings that are refurbished by NGOs, such as Concern, to host refugees. Many refugees are just renting. They could be renting a garage or plot of land. What we are finding is that those solutions are now becoming saturated. The number of evictions has increased. We have found since September that people can no longer afford to keep paying for some of the accommodation options they have. It is not that we are necessarily calling for large-scale camps or that we think this is the ideal solution. It is not. There are advantages and disadvantages to everything. We are seeking that the Lebanese authorities would reconsider the prohibition on large-scale camps because we must think about other solutions, given the saturation levels we have in all the other types of accommodation.

Someone also asked about sectarianism in the camps. What we are finding in northern Lebanon where we work is that it is quite a homogenous refugee population that comes mostly from the same sect. Where tension seems to be increasing is between the host Lebanese population and the oncoming refugees. It is one of the reasons why organisations such as Concern tries to provide assistance that will also benefit the host population and not just the refugees. For example, some of our water supply projects benefit both local people and refugees. In addition, we are going to try to facilitate dialogue between refugees and host populations to try and talk through issues and calm any tensions that might arise.

I will address the impact on children. It is wonderful to think there are families in Ireland that would be willing to take in refugee children. I am sure they would look after them very well and be very welcoming. However, from our perspective we think it is probably better to keep families together as much as possible. Some of the families have fled fighting and they might already have lost some family members and are already traumatised. To take a child out of that context and bring it to a far away, strange country would probably increase the trauma for them and their families. We prefer to provide assistance to families as a unit and to keep them in the country. It is one of the reasons we are looking at doing an education programme in Lebanon for Syrian refugee children who may well have missed two or three years of school at this stage. The aim is to try to get them back into the schooling system so they do not lose even more time in education, which would only disadvantage them further in their lives ahead.