Professor Kathleen Lynch:

I will address some of the questions the Chairman raised about children and education in particular. The first thing I will say is that we should remember that there are almost 2,000 children in the direct provision system.

With Afghanistan, we will be bringing in a whole new suite of children because of asylum policy to help bring in families. For example, under Ireland's programme for Syrian refugees we already have nearly 2,000 people who are from Syria, 40% of whom are children under the age of 18. DCU and my university, UCD, have done considerable research with children and their integration especially children from Syria.

We know there are many issues, as Ms Gibney said. There is the question of integration from day one. That is a key policy issue. It is very important to look at the children and their families as resources for our society. They come from different cultures. They are traumatised. Some members of the committee may have read the novel, The Beekeeper of Aleppo, about the Syrian refugee crisis. It tells in a very personalised way what people go through before they get here.

Children need, for example, wrap-around supports in schools and in the places where they live. They need appropriate accommodation where they are not retraumatised. Retraumatisation is a very big issue. If they go to school, as most of them will, we have the very serious issue of language and the availability of interpreters and other people to support them in our schools. There are no particular support services in schools. We have additional needs assistants but they are not assigned to schools on the basis of the number of children within them who are in a refugee or asylum position. That is a very serious question.

If children are to settle, they must also settle emotionally. It is not just a matter of settling in educationally even though that is very important. They must settle in emotionally and they must make friends. They cannot make friends if they have no language and no support. We must take an holistic view of the child and their families in this system, which is very challenging. Very little money is allocated to this - €29.8 million is very little given that the Irish League of Credit Unions this year has documented that for the average Irish family the cost of having a child in primary school for a year is €1,000 and 70% of low-income families are borrowing significantly. Additional language support is crucial for children in primary and secondary schools. Those would be some of the more fundamental things we need for children. I thank the members for their questions.