Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I advise the Deputy that my Department advised or assisted more than 8,000 people to return safely to Ireland as part of our consular response to the Covid-19 crisis. The priority was to help those normally resident in Ireland to return home safely on commercial flights where possible and, where not possible, on flights chartered by the EU and other partners. The challenges to these efforts, including the closure of borders, airports and airspace, and the suspension of many services were significant and the scale of these repatriation efforts were unprecedented in recent times.

In three exceptional cases where there were significant groups of Irish citizens with no alternative options to get out and in circumstances that made them particularly vulnerable, we chartered planes ourselves. In this way, we repatriated 93 citizens from Peru on 29 March, 68 citizens from India on 4 April and 95 from Nigeria on 11 May. These flights were arranged in close co-operation with partners also facilitating the repatriation of citizens from other EU and European Economic Area, EEA, member states as well as British citizens and were supported through the EU Union Civil Protection Mechanism. This is the first time that Ireland has arranged flights using this mechanism.

I pay tribute to my Department and the consular team, which I do not often get a chance to do, which did heroic work during this period. We ended up setting up our own call centre. At times we were almost like a call centre for airlines. We had people telephoning us night and day from all over the world, trying to get assistance and advice and co-ordinating with airlines to try to do that. A huge number of people were assisted and got home much sooner than they otherwise might have been able to.

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