Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

That is great. I thank the Minister and his officials for attending. Of the people present today, I have no doubt but that the Minister has done extraordinary work. Behind him are the people who do not get to appear at committees. They also do extraordinary work. We have had and are continuing to have an unprecedented experience.

I will begin by considering how we ensure that Irish people are content to live with the imperfect. There will, of necessity, be an imperfect solution here because of the nature of the emergency and the sudden speed at which people have come among us, and our need to respond to that. How we communicate that is important. At one point, I needed to contact the Minister about an issue arising in our area, where a community centre was to be taken over on very short notice. I found it very refreshing and sobering that his response was that we have to be content with the fact there are going to be responses of this nature that are not perfect. The communication is reiterating that all of the time and continuously saying, for example, that people are going to stay in community centres. We will have to have responses that are far less than ideal, but the fact is that people are fleeing war and we need to keep that to the forefront. One of my activities every morning is to check which page in the paper the Ukrainian war appears on. Sadly, it moves farther and farther away from the front page on a daily basis. I find that quite shocking because there are still people in the midst of horrific conflict in Ukraine.

My questions comes down to being mindful that there are people who have a child or a family member with a disability who is unable to get to the border and, perhaps because of their disability, unable to escape the conflict. There are Irish organisations that have gone over and brought people and families to Ireland. They have done that spontaneously and out of their own experience and personal contacts. As we get to grips with the situation and with the people who are arriving and who are likely to arrive, are we establishing a mechanism of notification of, perhaps, an exit for people with disabilities to allow them to come to Ireland? Do we have appropriate accommodation for them? Are we co-ordinating with disability services across Ireland to elicit support from them in this regard? I am mindful that resources are finite.

We have had a drive towards utilising holiday homes and incentivising their use. They are not relevant in the context of the housing crisis because they were never going to be available. Can we provide further incentives in that regard? I appreciate that this matter is relevant to the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage.