Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy McCarthy. We were conscious of Cork and Belfast and all parts of this island. As I think I told the Deputy in the Dáil before, we have plans to move office in Cork and this will make room for additional staff. We do, therefore, have a commitment to expanding there. On the broader issue of new offices being needed, I think, on balance, ensuring the service is accessible and working quickly is the priority, but we do keep these issues under review. I thank the Deputy for his kind words in relation to the evacuation of Irish citizens. I wish to be associated with those words because of the incredible work done by our diplomats over the course of the weekend. Even today, I think we had a further three Irish citizens leave Israel. We have relatively small numbers of people in Israel and Iran, but every person and Irish citizen matters to us and we have a duty of care to every one of them. It was really good work being done.

I heard a few comments that were a little bit ill-informed, not here of course. These comments included a question as to why Ireland is relying on the assistance of other European countries. To be clear, that is not how it works at all. We activate the EU civil assistance mechanism, which means all countries work together. Obviously, if there was a country where there was a large number of Irish people, we have options in terms of chartering planes and the like. We have done it before and we could, God forbid, if the need were to arise, do it again. In this case, though, we had a relatively small number of citizens involved and it simply made much more sense from a safety and efficiency point of view to work together.