Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am glad to get the opportunity to talk about this issue because I am very hurt and out of sorts about what is taking place on the Muckross Road in Killarney this evening. Seventy-seven single male asylum seekers have arrived. When we are talking about wars and conflicts we seem to be getting more men, whether they are refugees or asylum seekers. We do not know where the women are. Are they fighting the wars? I am being honest. We are talking about an international consultative policy and some forum. We need to have a national policy here to deal with the results of the conflicts all over the world.

Killarney and Kerry have taken on their fair share of asylum seekers and refugees. We are full of them and we have enough of them. In case the Minister of State is not aware, after the asylum seekers arrived, a van came along with a load of e-scooters. Who paid for them? They did not pay for them anyway. It is the fellas who are working all over the country and are out early in the morning who are paying for them. The asylum seekers were landed in alongside a 94-year-old woman without any consultation whatsoever. I have been begging here for a week or more for the Minister or his team to go and talk to the residents of the Muckross Road. It has not happened. I asked that it happen before the asylum seekers arrived or before their arrival was contemplated. They have landed now, and the women and girls that used to walk the Muckross Road morning, noon and night will all stop doing that. They are worried about their safety. On top of that, the tourism economy of Killarney and Kerry is now being compromised on a daily basis.

We need to sort out our own country first and sort out our own policies. There are more men coming than women. We cannot understand it.

He brought over 400 of them to the Killarney hotel last year and they fought between themselves. We want to know where they are coming from. They have to be vetted. If someone was allocated a house inside in Killarney or any part of Kerry by Kerry County Council, they would not be left into it without being vetted-----

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