Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the fact that the Minister of State has gone back to Lebanon to look for an additional number of refugees mainly from Syria, but also Jordan, where I understand conditions are particularly harsh for refugees. That is a welcome initiative.

Is the stream of refugees we were due to take from Italy closed off now? Is that finished? I do not know whether the Minister of State is in contact with his colleagues from Italy and elsewhere. Given the political situation in Italy, it is interesting that the country with perhaps the most difficult political issue with migration and refugees at the moment seems to be the one that has failed to relocate refugees.

Second, how we integrate refugees once they are here is critical. There is concern about the numbers in emergency accommodation and, while we have a housing crisis, it is critically important that in the processing of people, once they come here, they are not held in long-term hotel or other emergency accommodation and are settled in houses.

What is the Minister of State's expected timeline in that? Even in broad figures, rather than going down to the minutiae of numbers, when does he think there will be 4,000 refugees here? How long will it take to get them housed?

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