Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Howlin for his kind wishes.

In the first instance, in regard to the response, "Yes" is the answer to the Deputy's question in terms of the key infrastructure. President Zelenskyy, on the phone call that recently took place with the Tánaiste and Minister of Foreign Affairs, underscored the level of investment they need in their SME sector to rebuild the country, of which Ireland has provided €25 million which has been disbursed in the most recent budget.

To give a flavour of some of the really important interventions on the ground, we have provided in the region of 4,000 blood bags, 10,000 bio-protection suits, 50,000 medical protection masks, 10,000 tonnes of meals and foodstuffs and more than 200 units of body armour. We have provided contained water treatment plants that have been brought out, as well as funding through the mechanism of the World Bank.

I had a bilateral conversation with my Austrian counterpart and she underscored the importance of non-lethal aid in the response to Ukraine. When she was out there with a group of European foreign affairs ministers there was, unfortunately, a bombing close by and as the first responders from Ukraine were attending that site she could see visibly the Austrian symbol on the back of the protection equipment that they had handed over. That was a very visible response and showed the effect that non-lethal interventions can have, which is very important for our country.

Regarding the plans for rapid build homes, we currently have six sites and most are on site. We are trying to increase this through the local authority network and to get more derelict properties back into use. I know the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage and the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth are working across purposes trying to achieve a significant increase but as I know from my experience over the past 12 months in the Department with responsibility for housing it is very difficult to project into the future with the huge uncertainty surrounding what will happen in Ukraine.

In terms of the twin approach with international protection, I saw a figure that in the period of January to January there was more than an 1,100% increase in international protection citizens coming to Ireland to seek asylum, which is a massive increase. It was very hard to predict a year previous to that but the State is really ramping up its response and trying to ensure we have shelter, which is very important.

The State has frozen around €1.8 billion of Russian assets that are currently in Ireland. The competent authorities are the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Central Bank of Ireland and the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment. I note that work is underway to see how they can re-purpose those assets in terms of rebuilding Ukraine and I understand there are legal issues at the moment as to how they may do that but they are working collectively with the EU to see what is possible to achieve that and we would support that.

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