Dr. Fiona O'Reilly:

I will come in on another positive point. As I briefly mentioned, the mobile health and screening unit is another positive. It is funded and provided through the HSE social inclusion services, and applies for migrants in the Irish refugee protection programme when we know they are coming over and Ireland has accepted them. It is designed to ensure they all get a proper 45-minute or one-hour consultation with a doctor and a nurse to unpack their medical problems, any issues with their documentation or the medical history that have come over with them, or assessments that have come from the refugee camps they have been in. An interpreter for whatever language is required can be booked to be available on-site. The children's vaccinations record is looked at because they may have missed a load of vaccinations, having been in refugee camps for a number of months or years. All of that can be packaged and provided to their primary care doctor whose list they will be put on. That kind of assessment and integration of healthcare does work in those circumstances.

That does not necessarily apply to those who do not arrive in a planned way and are not people we have agreed to take. However, there is no reason why, with additional resources, specialised integration and health integration teams could not be made available. Such a team could be assigned to each HSE community healthcare organisation, CHO, area or something like that. When new migrants come in, those teams would be able to smooth the pathway of integration into the healthcare system.