Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Funding is available from the EU Commission to support member states with costs now. There is a new system in place. I have spoken to the Commissioner responsible for it. He was clear in terms of reassurance that funding would be available for countries like Ireland for accommodation costs and so on but also countries that are much more deeply impacted by numbers such as Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland. Four million refugees have come into Poland in four months. It is unbelievable. One million a month. No conflict anywhere in the world has seen that kind of numbers in recent history that I can think of and some awful conflicts have taken place in recent decades. They are extraordinary numbers in a very short period. There are other examples. There is probably 5 million Syrians outside of Syria but that happened over a decade or so. It is really unbelievable. I suspect what is happening there is that while the funds were being finalised, put together, assessed and so on, the Commission told countries to use their Cohesion Funds that they could access straight away. I suspect that is what was happening but I can come back with more detail on it. I am not aware that we have drawn down any funds yet from the Commission. I presume that applications will go in on some, but not all, the costs. I remind people that we are putting in an Estimate to spend about €2 billion on supporting Ukrainians in Ireland. That is not a small amount of money. We are more than happy to do it given the suffering and the plight they face but these are big financial commitments that the Commission has an obligation to help to fund and I think it will.

I refer to the four recommendations. First, on the national refugee response lead, in truth it is the Taoiseach so far on this. We have Cabinet subcommittee meetings specifically on Ukraine. They are very punchy meetings in terms of hard questions being asked and an insistence on answers, timelines and so on. They are led by the Taoiseach. But the Deputy is right. We need to build on that with someone who is permanently on the job and there are people who are. The way this evolved at the start with pledges, allocations and management was very much focused around the Red Cross. That has now shifted. While there continues to be a role for the Red Cross responsibility for finding accommodation and supports and matching Ukrainian families up with Irish families and sourcing local accommodation, whether converting a convent, school or accessing student accommodation has now shifted to local authorities. It includes temporary solutions but also finding more permanent solutions. A huge amount of work is going on to support and facilitate 40,000 people.

It is a significant challenge. We need to get better at it. Some mistakes have been made and some things are not happening as fast as we would like them to. A number of pilot projects are being rolled out. For example, the purchase of 500 modular units is being managed and is under way. We will see the benefits of that in a few months.

Much is taking place. In some ways, we are learning as we go. We have never had to deal with this number of people in such a short time. To give some reassurance, this conversation is taking place at a senior level in government. The Taoiseach chairs meetings, with all the key Ministers and State agencies feeding into them. The benefit has to be felt in all counties and cities, where there are some real pressure points that need to be addressed. The line Minister is Deputy Roderic O'Gorman but it would be unfair to leave it all on his desk. All Cabinet Ministers have a role to play in providing supports, whether it is the Minister for Social Protection, the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, the Minister of State with responsibility for the Office of Public Works, the Minister for Education, or the Minister for Health. This has consequences for hospitals, schools, sports clubs and community development. The most difficult pressure point is housing and accommodation. About 8% of hotel rooms in the country have effectively been block booked to ensure Ukrainian families have accommodation. That is a significant number.

The medium-term and immediate needs of those families are the Government's focus. We are ensuring emergency fallback positions and so on, which we have, with places such as the facility in Citywest and elsewhere. I take on board those four requests. I think there will be a director of services in each county. That should have been there already. If it is not, I understand that there should be a person to contact in each local authority about this issue. The plan is evolving all the time. It is not a question of just publishing a plan and implementing it, when one is dealing with people arriving every day. We do not know how many people will arrive into the EU or Ireland next month. It will depend on Russian actions. We need contingency plans for different scenarios, which is what we are trying to develop. We may need an established national co-ordination group for Ukrainian leadership whose members we could speak to directly. The Ukrainian ambassador is often involved in that role. She has been remarkably hands-on. A more formalised structure may be helpful too. The Ukrainians who I have spoken to are remarkably pragmatic and reasonable about trying to overcome the challenges we face with supports, accommodation and so on.

I will need to check with my colleague, the Minister for Justice, about the proceeds of crime legislation and the legalities that have resulted in a money message issue. I take the point the Deputy has raised. I suspect it is a legal concern and I do not want to stray into an area I have not been briefed on.

On the strategy of the EU regarding the conflict in Ukraine, the European Union has been very united on this, with some exceptions. Getting agreement on the sixth sanctions package was not easy and it took longer than it should. By and large, the European Union has been remarkably united. There have been a number of miscalculations by Russia. One was that the European Union would not be as united as it has been. This is the case regardless of which country one looks at. I have been involved in many debates with ministers whose countries have different relationships with Russia, but there has been a remarkable sense of solidarity and unity. I think that will continue. This has had a dramatic influence on the European Union. It has questioned its raison d'être, what it stands for, why it is important and what its role in the world needs to be in the future, particularly on this Continent. That has resulted in a real change in European politics. I am not quite sure what that will end up looking like. I think the appetite for enlargement has changed, as has the pace, the urgency and the willingness to make decisions quickly in the European Union. The relationship between governments and the institutions of the European Union has changed for the better. People like President von der Leyen have stepped up to try to lead opinion regarding policy change and so on in a way we have not seen before from the Commission. That is probably a good thing.

At the moment, the strategy is to provide military, financial, humanitarian and political support to Ukraine, which is under attack and is desperately trying to survive that attack. I do not believe the European Union knows how this will end. Anybody who pretends to know is a bluffer. All of the predictions about what will happen have proven to be wrong so far. Most of the predictions were that this full invasion would not happen, which was wrong. We then got a lot of military advice, as well as political advice, that this war would not last for more than a week and that Ukrainian cities would fold one after another. It was viewed as a tragedy but that was where it was going. Those people could not have been more wrong in underestimating the resilience, strength and unity of the Ukrainian people when resisting Russia. There is now a brutal conflict in eastern Ukraine. It is moving slowly. Who knows where it will go?

Our position has to be informed by Ukrainian leadership and we have to support them in the judgments they make about whether conditions for a ceasefire develop. We have an obligation to support that democratic Government in the difficult choices and decisions it makes in the future, as well as keeping a channel of communication to Moscow open. The idea that we should cut it off entirely and not even talk to it is also wrong. Ultimately, the European Union needs to try to find a way to end this. We have to end it in a way that the Ukrainian leadership supports, given the extraordinary sacrifices Ukrainians have made in the face of this aggression.

I take Deputy Howlin's point about enlargement of the European Union. We cannot assume that everything will stay the same because the European Union enlarges. A concern for some countries is that there may be a change in the power balance which would shift power in the European Union to the east, but we have to find a way to manage that. The European Union should never give the sense that our door is closed to countries that are willing to reform and change. The Deputy's point is correct, which is why standards for full membership and accession have to remain high. Those benchmarks are tough for political leaders to meet. It is not easy to become a member of the European Union, but the rewards when one gets there are extraordinary.