Ms Catherine Kelly:

I thank the Senator for the question. As I said in my opening statement, we were able to house two of the families with Cheeverstown, but two of the families we could not house. Once they go into the system, they end up in hotels. The latter are not disability friendly. If they go into the system and then do not accept what they get, they are at the end of the system. We hired two holiday homes. The families have them only until the end of May. After that, we are desperately trying to get two houses for them that are appropriate for the kids and for Olena herself. This is what we are trying to work on at the moment. What is missing is that there are no quorums. People are doing amazing work all across Ireland but they may not be doing it in a co-ordinated way. They are doing it from their hearts and maybe it is not being done in the context of quorums. Consider the issue of women in leadership for example. Quorums had to come in before things changed. Perhaps this is something we need to look at.

The issue of doctors and medicine has been absolutely huge, including trying to get access to services such as physiotherapy. We have a child who has cerebral palsy. We can see a massive physical deterioration in him. Previously he would have had physiotherapy about twice a week. The concern is that as a child it will affect him going into adulthood. We are begging and borrowing from people we know to get the services that these people desperately need.

The Senator spoke about culture. That is a very interesting point. This comes down to conversations that begin for us in the context of figuring out what somebody's culture is, and finding the time and having the space to do that. From our experience of it, we see that people are coming over with post-traumatic stress disorder. We see that people are grieving and sad. It is a time to acknowledge the enormity of what they have left behind. It is about the most basic things that people need, which are their homes, shelter, food, and then setting them up with all of the provisions they need. Then we will see massive mental health issues. If we read any of the research papers on mental health, we can see that rates of suicide and depression are very high. While some people get treated, many go undiagnosed and untreated. There must be a process in respect of this grief and people's mental health. We are going to have to put in place a lot of trauma support and formal supports for people.