Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. At the outset, I recognise that very many communities across the country, including in County Kerry, have accepted and even welcoming large numbers of Ukrainians and international protection applicants in the past few years. With respect to the Harmony Inn in Kingscourt, Killarney, the Minister has met the Kerry TDs, the mayors of Kerry and of Killarney, and the chief executive of Kerry County Council. I think that meeting may have been about two weeks ago. The community engagement team in the Department of the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, is engaging with elected representatives in Kerry and will continue to do so. It is also happy to engage with representatives of local residents. I understand that a contract is now in place but I do not know the details of that. I appreciate that Kerry now has approximately 685 international protection applicants living in the county. As roughly 3% of the population, that is approximately 3% of international protection applicants, but I appreciate there may be particular places within Kerry where the number is high and that this has an impact on local services and the local economy. We understand people's concerns in that regard. For this reason, the Government is putting in place a scheme to help small business. The Minister, Deputy Coveney, is currently developing that €250 million scheme to help all businesses with increased costs. Separate to that, the Minister, Deputy Catherine Martin, is developing a dedicated scheme through Fáilte Ireland to help businesses where their footfall has been affected by the fact that a large proportion of tourist beds have been taken out of the system in order to accommodate people seeking refuge from abroad.

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