Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As of this morning, more than 10,000 Ukrainians had arrived in Ireland and registered for international protection. We expect that number will rise to 20,000 by the end of the month. It is reasonable to assume that figure will probably hit approximately 40,000 by the end of next month, although nobody can know for sure. What we are seeing is effectively a 1% increase in our population in the course of a few weeks. That is going to have serious impacts on education, healthcare, housing, social protection, the public finances and even on things like greenhouse gas emissions. Absolutely all calculations change when the population increases by 1% or 2% in the course of a few weeks.

To put this in context, when homelessness was at its worst, we had about 10,000 people in emergency accommodation. We have approximately 7,000 people in direct provision at present. We now have 10,000 Ukrainians seeking international protection. That figure will probably be 20,000 by the end of the month and 40,000 by the end of the following month. This is the scale of the crisis we are dealing with. I need to be honest with the House and the Irish people: it will not be possible to provide what we would like to provide, namely, self-catering, own-door accommodation for everyone in the space of a few weeks or even a few months. This will be a very difficult crisis to deal with. Every country in Europe will be in the same boat in having to provide as good accommodation as we possibly can given the circumstances.

The response is being led by the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Deputy O'Gorman, and involves a number of Departments including the Departments of Education, Social Protection, Justice, Foreign Affairs and Health. There is a cross-Government group that involves almost every Department.

In terms of hotels, so far we had managed to retain 2,260 rooms as of 19 March for 4,341 people. County councils have in the region of 1,800 emergency beds that they can mobilise. Large venues are being identified, including the Green Glens Arena in Millstreet, Citywest, and Gormanston. The latter is owned by the Defence Forces and accommodation will be provided there, although, unfortunately, it will be very basic accommodation. We have approximately 20,000 pledges from members of the public who are offering to provide accommodation. That effort is being led by the Irish Red Cross. Of these 20,000 pledges, for which we are very grateful to the public for its generosity in making those pledges, 4,000 are for independent own-door units or vacant properties. They are being assessed and we hope to bring them into use as soon as possible. That is the priority. After that, we will move on to people who can offer a spare room, particularly those with access to public transport.

That is the response we are dealing with at the moment. It is an enormous crisis. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Coveney, was in Poland a few days ago and he will tell Deputies what he experienced. Entire conference and exhibition centres there are being used to accommodate millions of refugees. The scale of what we are going to have to deal with is unprecedented in our experience, but it will not be on the scale of what other European countries are experiencing. We will just have to do our best in the coming weeks, be as generous as we can and provide as good a standard of accommodation as we can. However, we have to be honest and realistic about what is going to be possible and what is not.

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