Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I am not trying to be trite in any way and I hear what the Deputy is saying but we are in a European war right now. This is not normality in any context. We are responding to a European war that, as one Deputy said, we did not expect to be dealing with last year. We did not expect to dealing with this on 14 February this year. Our response has had to be an emergency response. It is the right thing to give people shelter and security when they arrive here. The medium-term accommodation of many Ukrainians will not be provided in the areas they are right now. It will not be in hotel accommodation. That is good, in one way, because we hope we will be able to provide them with accommodation that is more suited to longer term living than a hotel, which is not suited to longer term living. That approach also has its disadvantage because people will have to be moved from where they are now.

Two hotels in my constituency of Dublin West are housing Ukrainian displaced persons. They are in all parts of the country although I recognise there is a very large number in Clare. I also recognise that there is pressure on services there. We will work with those services. I know the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, has been working on issues to do with rural transport. He is aiming to bring forward improvements to Local Link that were going to happen anyway. He is also looking to provide a bespoke public transport service to reception centres in very rural areas.