Mr. Adam Harris:

In response to the question of whether we know how many people are involved, out of the approximate 25,000 people who have arrived in Ireland it would seem that there is not the expected percentage of people with a disability if the number was proportional. One indicator of that is the fact that so far, only 100 children have been registered with the HSE to access supports and services, which is worrying. That raises questions about how people get out of Ukraine and whether the screening our process can identify all of the people who may need supports so the problem is twofold. I firmly believe, and the WALK representatives have also talked about it here today, that we need to be prepared. I mean if we want to provide an equitable response to this crisis then we must take whatever steps that are necessary to support people with higher support needs getting to Ireland and to do so in meaningful numbers.

Deputy Canney is totally right about what he said about European co-ordination. We also need to think about another aspect of support. In terms of the countries that surround Ukraine, in particular Moldova, many of our sister organisations in Autism-Europe are much more engaged in this issue in terms of the number of people that they have been asked to support compared with ourselves. Plus, very often these countries do not have a huge amount of resources and there is not much to go around. Therefore, we need to think about how we can support Ukraine and its neighbouring countries as well.