Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

So did I until I started running. I should start by apologising for my hurried arrival into the Chamber. We were dealing with the matter of cybersecurity threats in a committee, specifically because of the situation we are discussing in the Chamber now, namely the outworkings of the criminal invasion of Ukraine by Russia. I add my voice again to everyone else's in saying we need to show absolute solidarity with the Ukrainian people. Part of that involves having a response that is adequate to a massive humanitarian disaster. We did not think we would have millions of people on the move directly in modern-day Europe. We are well used to disaster and humanitarian situations. We all know the Western world has not necessarily paid attention to places like Yemen and Palestine over many years. The fact is we are dealing with an absolute nightmare on our doorstep. We are a much smaller Europe than we were 20 or 30 years ago. Therefore we are very much connected with this. We need to make sure we have those parts in play. We know we have only the starting of pieces of work by local authorities.

5 o’clock

This has been co-ordinated centrally in the Department and by the International Protection Accommodation Services, IPAS, but we need to ensure communication. Local authorities are talking about a Covid-type response and putting those sort of operations in play. That needs to happen but this needs to be that on steroids. Soon we will be dealing with 20,000 Ukrainian refugees. We could be talking about anywhere up on 200,000. There is a housing crisis. We are aware of the difficulties we have across the board. At a European level and at a State level, we must be imaginative. We need to look at solutions that will deal with both. This is one of those cases about which we have already been taught by the pandemic where the State will have to do heavy lifting. It will have to be facilitated by Europe as that is the only way we can do it. We owe it to those people but we also owe it to our own people who we have failed over many years, and we have to deal with that now.

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