David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Yes. On the Calais situation, when the decision was taken in the Dáil, the French authorities had already moved people from Calais to accommodation located across France. The officials from my Department and that of the Department of Children and Youth Affairs have engaged with the NGOs who raised this matter with us. I have met some of the NGO representatives as well. We have engaged with the French authorities to see what can be done. We also want to ensure that we can look after children properly when they come here, in other words, that Tusla will have the appropriate facilities. We are talking, in the main, about providing foster care for children or minors. My Department must work with our colleagues in France, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Department of Children and Youth Affairs. My Department's role is to provide a legal mechanism for children. The Department of Children and Youth Affairs and Tusla have the responsibility to look after the children when they come here and to engage with them in France. We are anxious to have proper foster homes arranged for when the children arrive.

As the Dáil motion, to which everyone agreed, outlined, we want to identify children who want to come here and stay but who do not want to go to the UK. Most of the children or young people were in Calais because they wanted to travel to the UK. That is why they were there in the first instance. There are some challenges in respect of this matter. We will bring up to 200 people here, which is what was agreed by the Dáil, and they will stay here. This will be done in co-operation with the French authorities. There is no profiling, or anything like it, involved. Ideally, we want to bring in younger people who are in their early teens or pre-teens because they are young enough to settle into families. Older teens would find it more difficult to settle. I have been informed that many of the people that were in Calais were older teens. They may not want to come to Ireland and prefer the UK.

We are trying to work through the many challenges. I will keep the committee updated on progress on these matters because I was quite involved in the negotiations and work to have the motion passed in the Dáil and agreed. We will charter a plane to bring a further 130 people to this country on Friday. Part of the challenge has been transport, particularly as Ireland is an island. It is challenging to find transport links to transfer people from Lebanon and Greece to Ireland. Sometimes getting flights can be a challenge. It is hard to secure seats on planes during the high season of tourism. We have decided to charter planes to transport people here and 130 individuals will come here on Friday. I hope I have answered the questions.

I can confirm that profiling does not take place. We must ensure, to the best of our ability, that we do not bring somebody in here who has links with well known organisations or a tendency to take a terrorism route. We would have issues with those kind of indications. That is why we want the Garda to interview people in order to ascertain whether the refugees will pose problems. In the vast majority of cases, these people pose no problem but we must make sure. We must be able to say to the people of Ireland that we have carried out a minimum of security checks on those involved. We would face challenges if we did not do so.