Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for a comprehensive opening statement and the briefing document which contained considerable extra information. My first question may lie outside the Department's remit. The Minister said there are 64 full-time Ukrainian students in Ireland and 229 applying for this undergraduate test. However, the figures opening the Minister's briefing document suggest approximately 3,000 Ukrainian people. I am accounting for 300 people participating in third level education, which would only be approximately 10% of the 3,000 figure. Do we know what the remaining 90% are doing? Are they in the International Protection Accommodation Service, IPAS?

It strikes me that the English language skills training course is an extremely valuable capacity to build within the ETB sector. Is that available to non-Ukrainians, as well as Ukrainians? I know there has been an uptake in IPAS applications, as people arrive in from Ukraine. One will always have people who are English language learners. I know from being a language learner and a language teacher that when trying to learn a second language, it is better to be in a mixed language background. Two Ukrainians sitting beside each other in a language setting will tend to speak Ukrainian to one another rather than English, as they are supposed to do.

What the Minister said about the Erasmus scheme was very interesting. It answered a question that I have about how we would fund people coming into third level. There was also reference to the MSCA4Ukraine funding, which is a €25 million direct-aid package as part of the EU response. Will the Minister tell me how that will work? It sounds very promising.