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

I fully agree with and support Deputy Gannon when he spoke about calling it out, and especially when yesterday we saw the maternity hospital being bombed. There are no words to express the shock and horror of the images we see on the front pages of a newspapers this morning. Our Government is, on behalf of the Irish people, standing up. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Coveney, has been active in New York this week. We have led the call for the establishment of an investigation by the International Criminal Court to look at such instances. The Minister, Deputy Coveney, and our ambassador at the United Nations General Assembly, where we have a critically important place on the UN Security Council and on the United Nations Human Rights Council, are standing up as a voice for those nations that have been attacked. We will continue to do that.

Deputy Gannon rightly puts the question on what we can do here at home. The issue of how we manage the influx of young children who will come in is critical. I will share one personal experience. A number of years ago I was very fortunate to be brought by Human Appeal, an Irish Islamic charity, to a town called Reyhanlı on the Syria-Turkey border and the city of Antakya, or Antioch. I saw there at first hand how they managed with very similar circumstances. At that time there was the bombing and the destruction of Aleppo, and they were seeing very similar circumstances with people fleeing. I saw at first hand how they coped with and managed that. It provides us with a lesson. They engaged with the Syrians.

We need to engage with the Ukrainian minister for education, who I believe is talking to our Minister, and the Teaching Council is looking to see how we could employ some of the Ukrainian teachers who are coming here, how quickly we could establish classes that would give them flexibility in maintaining the Ukrainian curriculum, or how we could work with our Polish and other colleagues to ensure there is connection between how they are taught in the first number of weeks they may be there before they come to Ireland. It is a matter of involving the Ukrainian community and the Ukrainian ambassador, which I am confident we will be able to do, to make sure we can provide the best education and welcome for those children for whatever time they are here. That is our first duty.

Yes, we have a voice the on the UN Security Council, and, yes, we have sent humanitarian support. Ireland does not send military offensive weapons. What we can be good at and what we should stand up for in the UN Security Council and in the classrooms we will have to set up is looking after those children in particular as a sign of where our support stands and how our moral outrage at what is happening turns to effect.

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