David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)
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I welcome the witnesses and thank them for their somewhat disturbing presentations. I think of our country with a population of 5 million and they have spoken about the colossal numbers of people who are being impacted by climate change, conflict, corruption and children being disrupted at school and having to move more than once. We talk about Government doing X,Y and Z here and increasing budgets. Do they have any sense of the extent to which what they have described here is understood or known by the citizens of this country? Quite often, actions by a government and the state in a democracy comes from the citizenry. How much is known and understood and appreciated by the citizens here in Ireland about the real impact on real human beings, people of flesh and blood, like everyone else? I often think about how it would be if our families, children and grandchildren were impacted like this. How would we feel and what would we do? That is just one question. The witnesses are welcome to come here and talk to us but what about the citizenry of the country? We have seen a kind of a pushback against migration. I can understand why migration is occurring when people are fleeing the kinds of situations of conflict, corruption, climate change, starvation and hunger and God knows what else the witnesses have described.