Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I will comment on the resources that have been made available to address the situation in Ballaghaderreen and, more generally, for towns and villages that need supports and have new communities. We secured a 10% increase in SICAP in budget 2022. A core target group of SICAP is asylum seekers. For this year, we have set aside €10 million for support workers for Ukraine and that funding is being channelled through SICAP. SICAP has been reasonably well enlarged in the last two years to cope with at least two of those groups.

I will stray briefly into my other Department, which I am not representing today. I wish to flag that there is a plan for local authorities to employ integration workers and we hope to see that plan come to fruition later this year. I take the point the Chairman made about the other matter and I will convey it to the Department.