Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I listened carefully to what the Minister had to say. It is difficult to predict. We live in unsettled and unsettling times. We do not know where the war will go and how it will affect us, or whether it will or will not to a greater extent.

There are, however, some positive signs. Everybody is hiring at present. Everybody is looking for employees. I am sure some of the refugees will be available to take up work. They may not be permanent but they will be here initially. Might it be wise to take into account the vast number of workplace spaces that are available and cannot be filled in the private sector, where all kinds of manufacturing and service industries looking for options at present? How can we harness that to benefit the economy? I suggest a smoother, easier and simpler system of encouraging those who are anxious to bring new people into the economy to work from wherever in the short term, and that that could be factored in with a view to identifying the extent to which we can be positive, if at all possible, in the climate in which we find ourselves now.