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

I thank the Deputy for his question. On the higher level, when we are opening new accommodation either for Ukrainians or international protection applicants, we engage with the Department of Education and let it know people will be moving into the area in question. The Department now has a sophisticated scheme for identifying the areas in which there is pressure on school places. We engage with it on that and it can flag the issue.

The Deputy probably is focusing more on the micro level of individual schools. As part of the Ukraine response, the regional education and languages teams have been working very closely with schools to try to ensure Ukrainians are linked in with local schools. That has been working very successfully. Allocations for integration officers for this year are set out in the White Paper.

My Department has an allocation for the employment of integration officers in every local authority throughout the country. That is an area where the integration officers could provide an important link between people in international protection or Ukraine and State agencies and schools, as well as engaging with educational welfare officers and the like. We also have a budget to increase supports for NGOs in terms of the White Paper and reaching out to international protection applicants. I am very focused on education supports, knowing that probably one of the best ways to integrate children and, indeed, their parents into their new communities is to build up those linkages at schools. We will be looking to roll that out further.

Like the Deputy, I try to meet with schools in my area. A number of schools across a wide part of Dublin 15 were providing great support to students who were in emergency international protection. When that hotel was not available anymore and they moved out, the schools were looking to try to facilitate buses to continue to link people in. Schools do amazing work in terms of supporting both Ukrainians and international protection applicants. There are some bespoke measures in place from the Department of Education and we are looking to build further in terms of, particularly, the area of international protection applicants.