Ms Fiona Finn:

To be honest, I could not put a number on it. I could say, "10,000". I could say, "20,000". If one has to look at it, we are one of the richest countries in western Europe. We have the infrastructure to deal with this. The majority of Irish people support this. They want to do something. I would think that we need to be at the 20,000 plus mark to start with. We need to be more ambitious.

I would be slow to put a number on it because then it looks as if it will be capped at that and it will not rise any further. Some 1.2 million people have come in to Europe. That number is not enormous. It really is not. Europe is a Union of 500 million. The proportion is tiny. European has only seen 6% of the world's refugee population. The numbers we are dealing with are really, really small.

We could do far more than taking in 4,000 people. It is disappointing that we are even struggling to do that. We are constantly hearing the numbers, and statements that 80 will be coming in, and 20, and ten, and one. Every day we are dealing with those who are the faces behind these numbers. We have an 18 year old who we are working with at present who he is trying to bring his family in, and he has the whole burden of the responsibility of bringing his family in because he was they only one that they could afford to bring. When the Deputy asks what numbers, it is an arbitrary matter in a sense because one binds oneself into something by capping it. What would the Deputy's view be?