Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I also commend the Department on the work it has done. I have dealt with staff in the Department since the beginning of this crisis and have found them to be really helpful and sensible about these situations. In my county, Leitrim, we have a hotel, Lough Allen Hotel, in Drumshanbo, which has been closed for a number of years, since Covid, and is now open and has more than 200 Ukrainian refugees there. I have been there and visited them. It is a tremendous wonder to see people from practically the other side of the world come there and integrate and get on so well.

I spoke to the principal in the local secondary school as well. There are children preparing to go there. Some of them will wait until after the school holidays because we are so close to them now. A big effort is being made. However, I think the schools will need more assistance with all this because some of the children who come, naturally, will have difficulties with language, etc. Also, for some of them, there is autism and all the things we have in this country, which will come with them when they arrive. There are also elderly people who have various disabilities, conditions and other issues who will need medical assistance. That is one of the problems. Even in County Leitrim, with our low population, it is very hard to get a GP. That is one of the big issues that is coming up for an awful lot of the refugees. They cannot get a GP. They are being sent from pillar to post with no assistance. Particularly in an area where there is a hotel and a large concentration of refugees, some kind of medical service needs to be put in place to assist with that.

The other issue I have come across I came across first in Bundoran, where there was also a large number of refugees in a large guesthouse and now in a hotel as well. All of them want to work. They want to know where they can get work. Some of them are coming with skills. Some are nurses or doctors. There are people in various professions. With some of those professions, we absolutely need their work. We need them to come and help out because we have shortages of those skills. As mentioned earlier, however, the issue of Garda vetting and so on comes into play. Where will they go to get Garda vetting? They cannot go to the authorities in Ukraine, obviously. That will not happen. Therefore, some other system needs to be found to deal with that. That is absolutely essential.

In some areas there is a little tension or concern, perhaps in towns which, over the summer in particular, depend on tourism, with other businesses in the town also depending on tourists coming. Such areas now find that the hotels and other accommodation are not available for tourists. That will cause a little tension, so there needs to be due care and diligence around that to ensure that jobs and the possibility of business and commerce in those towns are not displaced. We just need to get that right if we can at all. So far, in fairness, there have been huge efforts and we are making great progress in getting it right.

The other issue that comes to mind is the huge number of people who have pledged accommodation and said they are prepared to take people into rooms in their houses. We know that will be difficult. I know of some cases in which it has been difficult up to now. A real effort needs to be made to try to get that done as speedily as possible for people and to ensure that if they do go into a place in somebody's home, there are services there to back up and to support the family that was prepared to take them on.

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