Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I want to acknowledge the co-operation of local authorities, local development companies, Deputies and Senators of these Houses and local councillors who have helped us to bring communities on board. It is a function of the community engagement team to do exactly what Deputy Dillon has described, namely, to talk to the relevant Government Departments. We have contact points in all of the relevant Departments. Another part of the structure that we are growing into, as part of the new community engagement team, is the community response fora. It is a function of these fora to gather the issues that are coming up on the ground, not just for Ukrainians but also for international protection applicants, and feed that up through the council as well. It is a new team, a new structure and a new way of doing things but we have a lot to build on. There is a lot of work going on in the background in terms of developing relationships with key stakeholders and, as Deputy Dillon mentioned, with central Government Departments as well.

See this speech in context