Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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First of all, on Deputy Cowen's question and Deputy Stanton's support for it, for us to essentially accept that something is a genocide, Ireland's approach to that question is that this is one that is asked in multiple conflict situations, whether it is in respect of Armenia, or various different conflicts in Africa at different times, or indeed parts of the Middle East. The approach we have taken is that Ireland recognises genocide and calls it as such under the precedent and on the back of an international court ruling or if an international consensus builds around a certain issue. I understand that that is not ideal on a number of levels.

First, it is often not possible for an international court to determine whether genocide took place because of the burden of proof required. Second, the international consensus issue is often problematic because of political interest, different perspectives and regional interests on the Security Council.

I take the point in relation to the Yazidi population, which has been targeted and treated in an appalling fashion. If both Deputies want to follow up with a meeting on that, we can maybe look at whether we can do more in that area. Iraq is in a vulnerable place with a government trying to find its feet. There is still a significant presence of foreign troops there. If we can do more to support the organisations linked with the assessment of what happened to the Yazidi population and how it should be categorised or with humanitarian assistance, I am open to that. We have a flexible aid budget. We have to prioritise within it because it is an endless ask but if members want me to focus more on that, I would be happy to do so. I will follow up with Deputy Cowen on it. Maybe we can have a meeting on it and I will get a more detailed briefing.

Our consular services will say they have never had an 18 months like we have just been through. Thousands of Irish people needed assistance and support to understand their options for returning home and navigating their way through Covid restrictions in different parts of the world. That is particularly the case in Australia and New Zealand, where difficult choices are faced by Irish citizens because, once they come home, the chances of them going back, in terms of jobs and career opportunities, have been very limited in the short term due to restrictions. In other parts of the world, we have had to charter planes to get people home or work with the UK or other EU countries to share the chartering of planes. We chartered a plan out of Nigeria, a plane out of Peru and we have been in partnership with other countries in chartering planes out of India.

Our consular services have been heroic in quietly getting on with the job. There has been somewhat of an increase in resources there but most recent increases have been linked to the Passport Office. We do not have the option to shift huge numbers of new people into consular services. We put many people who would otherwise have been working in the Passport Office into our consular services to run call centres. Applications for passports were dramatically down so we had people we could shift into consular services. Over the Christmas period last year, we essentially had a travel call centre. We banned all commercial flights between Britain and Ireland. Instead, we did a deal with Aer Lingus and, predominantly, Ryanair to fly Irish residents home on a chartered schedule each day. My Department acted as a travel agency and our consular team were under huge pressure through the Christmas period on the phones.

The reason we are not seeing a big increase in expenditure is that we effectively shifted resources into consular services from passport services. That has not resulted in a Revised Estimate but it meant that the our consular team grew significantly. As consular cases fall back, international travel opens again and we get more demand in your Passport Office, people have shifted back to the passport service.

We ended up also effectively running a call centre for mandatory hotel quarantine. That is primarily the responsibility of the Department of Health but the Departments of Defence and Foreign Affairs have played a big part in ensuring it works efficiently around information call centres, standards in security and making sure everything is being done as it should be. That involves Defence Forces presence in airports, hotels and the transport systems between them. This is a Government effort and the year we have been through was so out of the ordinary that we have had to be flexible. There have been some increases in pay and administration but they have not been as marked as one might think because we have been able to shift resources within the Department.