Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute on this important issue. History has shown, since we have started taking in asylum seekers, that the conditions under which they have been living are not right. Human rights issues have not been addressed. We have placed people and families in congregated settings. For whatever reason, we have put them in buildings where they live in dormitories. They are isolated from communities. It takes a lot of time to get them to a stage where they are accepted and integrated into communities. Measures such as having curfews imposed on people to be inside at certain times of the evenings can be seen and are seen as a scandal in our time. The Minister is well aware of the issues with the mother and baby homes and with what we are trying to deal with, and what he as the Minister has been trying to deal with. We do not want to see anything like that happening again in our society. At times with asylum seekers, we are bordering on doing things that are not right.

This brings me to another concern I have. At present, we are bringing Ukrainian migrants into the country, which is right, but we are putting them into questionable accommodation. We are putting them into hotels and places where they have a bed and perhaps an ensuite and that is it.

I know many people have offered housing and volunteered to let families stay in their homes. The process of making sure that Ukrainians are integrated into our society will take a lot of effort. At a time when we have crises in housing and with the cost of living, it is important in whatever we do that we deal with these people as individuals who have suffered a great deal, have been discommoded and have left their homes, families and country to come to Ireland.

If we are to learn anything, we have to go back in time and history. When our ancestors left Ireland never to return to these shores and were forced to travel to America because there was no work here, some were treated well and others not so well. We were very upset about that. At the same time, we should be very upset if our nation, Government and State do not provide properly for human beings coming into this country. We pride ourselves on our generosity and on making sure that take people in and embrace strangers. We need to go back to basic principles. When people are coming to this county we should try to provide them with accommodation that is suitable for them to live in and raise their families and allow them to integrate into the communities that are embracing them. A huge effort will have to made. This debate sets out the concerns Deputies have about how we treat people coming into the country who, through no fault of their own, find themselves in a position where their lives have been turned upside down causing them to suffer enormous trauma.

The other issue I have come across is that of people with disabilities and children with special needs coming to Ireland from Ukraine. It is important that we integrate them into the services that are available as fast as possible. We should also take into account that the services are very much stretched in trying to deal with domestic demand. There is a lot to contemplate in this debate. We should all work together and not politicise this issue in any way.

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