Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising this important issue. I salute and commend all those volunteers who are doing so much to help Ukrainian refugees to settle in this country. As I said this morning, "our home is your home". The initial focus of our response has been on accommodation. To date, 19,283 people have arrived from Ukraine. Of these, 11,800 have sought accommodation. There has been a huge effort. We have never had to respond so quickly to such a refugee crisis before. I pay a warm tribute to the public servants, as Deputy Michael Healy-Rae did earlier today, who have done exceptional work, working late into the evenings, to secure accommodation for refugees. There are nearly 2,500 children attending our schools so far. I thank the education community. This is war time and this is something we never thought we would experience.

We therefore have been focusing in the initial phase on addressing accommodation. We have much more to do. We are under pressure but we have to get through all the pledges. Significant work is under way. The Deputy referred to hotels, guest houses, bed and breakfast accommodation, the accommodation pledge by the public, State-owned or private properties which may be suitable for short-term accommodation, religious properties, local authority facilities and so on. All of that is being worked on as we speak and has to be where we direct energy right now.

Income support is immediately available from the Department of Social Protection once refugees come into the country, under the European Union's temporary protection directive. Health services are also being provided for the families who have arrived in the country. That has been our immediate focus.

We are establishing community response forums in each local authority to co-ordinate local responses to the Ukraine crisis. That forum will bring together all of the community and voluntary organisations which are active locally, as well as the mayor or cathaoirleach of each local authority. These local forums are best placed to put arrangements in place to help the new arrivals from Ukraine to access services. We believe these forums are an important part of what the Deputy has articulated with regard to providing supports on the ground for families, to enable them to integrate in our society more effectively. We are asking local authorities to take a leadership role in those community forums to enable people to come together to provide additional supports and services at that local level. We are witnessing this all over the country. Communities are responding in that way and we appreciate that.

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