Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am just trying to be helpful to the House. We have no difficulty in putting on additional time and particularly utilising Fridays and Mondays to address any of the outstanding recommendations that the Deputy feels would benefit from more detailed discussion and debate in here. We can provide a lot of time for that and I am sure many Deputies would be anxious to avail of the time to debate that in detail in here.

I understand the Dublin Docklands legislation will be in next week.

If, as a Whip, the Deputy discusses having a debate on refugees with his fellow Whips, the Government would certainly be happy to facilitate that. We have agreed in discussions with the European Union to accept a number of refugees under the European programme particularly from war-torn countries such as Syria. If there is agreement among the Whips on that issue, we would be happy to do it. As the Deputy knows, a number of people are already coming in and there is considerable co-ordination between the different agencies, including the Red Cross, which will provide services. The last time we had a significant number of programme refugees coming in, it was as a result of the conflict in Bosnia. So we have considerable experience collectively as a society of addressing these very important and significant humanitarian issues of rescuing people from what has been happening in the dreadful conflict in Syria.

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