Mr. Niall Burgess:

I thank the Deputy. I also thank him for his comments about my colleagues in the mission network.

We assisted some 24,000 people with phone lines during that period. We assisted directly around 8,500 Irish citizens in returning home, mostly during the first six months of the pandemic. With regard to those 8,500 citizens, we operated three repatriation flights, one from Nigeria, one from India and one for our citizens in Peru, which was arguably one of the most complex of all the operations. In addition, towards the end of the year we activated our crisis centre and phone lines again to assist citizens who had been stranded in Great Britain. We assisted around 3,500 back then, some on flights and some on ferry connections.

On the total cost of those repatriations, they were handled in very different ways. The flights we organised were mostly reimbursed through EU sources and many of our citizens came home from other parts of the world on flights organised by other EU partners. A basic reimbursement system was put in place for that. In some cases, the operators took direct reimbursement from the citizens and in some cases we brought the citizens home but asked them to reimburse us later. The amount outstanding to our own account is in my report. The actual cost so far is €147,000.