Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak. I will start by thanking the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, and his colleagues for the work they are doing on our behalf. If one looks at any European country and the challenges they face, it is the political issue of our time. The Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, has handled it extremely sensitively in a very difficult environment. The figures speak for themselves. The Minister has managed to provide emergency accommodation for 62,000 Ukrainians and 20,000 people under international protection. This has been created largely from scratch. This is not eating into the housing output we are developing. Nonetheless, it is three times the scale of our annual housing output. The Minister has managed to come up with emergency accommodation for the vast majority of those people.

No system could absorb those sorts of numbers without creating considerable disturbance to the conventional way in which decisions are made. The Minister has tried to be conciliatory at all times. Of course, as the Minister said earlier, we must be realistic about what is possible in terms of consultation. When one faces the alternative of people being on the streets in tents and being exposed and very vulnerable, the scope for consultation about responding to those immediate and vital needs is very curtailed. What the Minister sought to do was the right thing, trying not to consult on the basis that one could somehow make this go away and that people could go elsewhere, but to consult on the basis of how can we, as a community, together create the capacity to manage this. The approach the Minister has taken is the right approach. I am aware it is very time intensive on the Minister and on his colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Joe O'Brien, but it is very important.

Many local authorities are taking a very active hand in creating a community in each of our local authorities where there are people and groups who are committed to the task of managing this and responding to the needs this imposes on communities in a way that keeps communities together. I commend the decision to have the €50 million fund. I recognise, as Deputy Boyd Barrett said, that this is now expended. The scale of that fund needs to be at a considerably greater level. Some €50 million is less than €1,000 per person being accommodated. To assist in seeing communities grow the capability to manage this situation, we need to build that. We need to invest time and effort in building those kinds of community groups who are the glue that keep our communities together. These include sports organisations, voluntary organisations, active retirement groups and the many organisations that constitute our communities. We need to have systematic reach out to those groups to build that network. We could be more ambitious in trying to build that capability within our communities.

As the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, pointed out, there is no sign that this is going to abate. When one looks at the displacement levels as a result of climate change, it shows daily how disruptive it will be to populations and how traditional living is being up-ended for many of those communities. We will see this as a continuing challenge for us.

I agree with those who said there are many menacing forces aligned against the Government and against governments that are trying to manage this process. There are states seeking to weaponise migration, very consciously with the objective of creating difficulties and undermining the solidarity Europe has been able to show in the case of Ukraine and undermining regimes that are founded on democratic values. Sadly, we have seen the fracturing of some of those democratic values in countries even within the European Union.

We live in a social media world where the order of the day is clickbait, alternative facts and distortion. It is all too widespread, unfortunately. It is the handling of challenges like this that make communities like ours with democratic values very vulnerable to the bad actors seeking to distort facts and create dissension within communities. It is particularly galling to see political forces invoke our national flag and suggest taking in migrants is some way an attack on our national identity. I find that just extraordinary. We are a people whose national identity is built around our experience of displacement. Millions of people were displaced particularly during the Great Famine and in the years afterwards, and this continued for a very long period. It is part of what we are, recognising the wrench, the desperation and the fear in people who are forced to find refuge. It is something we understand.

As a country that faced the ravages of emigration, it is very important we keep that to the fore as we seek to respond to this issue. What is in our national identity is rising to the challenge of managing this in a sensitive and proper way. At the weekend, the President reminded us, and it was timely he was photographed with those very stunning images in sculpture, of those who had to leave our country. It is a reminder to us that, hard as this challenge is to manage, it is very important we show that we can and do manage it sensitively.

It is equally vitally important, and the Minister, Deputy Harris, dealt with this in his contribution, that our system of international protection is seen to work. Last year, there were 15,000 applications for international protection. We only managed to process one in three of those. There is a need to continually grow the capacity of the system so people recognise that we will give refuge to people who need it but there is a system for those who do not meet the criteria. It is right the Minister is imposing fines on airlines where documentation is not being presented in a proper way, is streamlining applications coming from countries that are safe, and is having a system, ultimately, of enforcement and deportation. We need a system that is seen to work because we do not have an indefinite capacity to absorb groups. If we are to have a system that is robust and up to the highest standards, we must have a system that manages those applications in a proper, fair and just way. It is important people have confidence in that just as they have confidence in the work of Ministers to find accommodation for those who so desperately need it.

At this time, we also need to think beyond this emergency phase. That in itself will be difficult because we have, to date, had a very clear distinction between emergency accommodation and long-term housing, which are on very different tracks. However, we are moving to a phase where we recognise that quite a significant proportion of Ukrainians will remain here. They are working and will seek to make their future here. We need to start to think about the longer term way in which we will address this issue. We are absolutely stretched with the emergency planning that is going on now, but we need to have a system that works. We all see the fantastic contribution the new Irish are making to our communities, whether it be in the sports or cultural field, where we have seen so many people of diverse backgrounds, who are the new Irish, shining. In the fields of entrepreneurship, cultural diversity, critical skills and caring, many of our people have learnt to see what a valuable contribution this diversity is bringing to our country. We need to start to look at that longer term challenge as we manage these short-term difficult circumstances.

I commend the Minister of State on the work he is doing, which is difficult but is definitely of immense importance and value to our community.

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