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

I do not have enough time to list all the things we are doing, but we have a range of funds, including local funds and national funds. For example, the grants under the national integration fund and the asylum migration fund will be announced in the first quarter of next year. There are many other important initiatives. Each local authority has a local economic and community plan. They should be addressing migrant integration in that space. We have funding rolled out to local authorities to appoint local authority integration teams. Some of them have started that process and some teams are in place.

We are now seeing Ukrainians joining the community employment and Tús schemes, which fall under one of my other Departments, namely, the Department of Social Protection. There are 145 on CE schemes and 277 on Tús. The right to work after six months has made an enormous difference to the integration of international protection applicants. It has probably been one of the most positive policy changes in recent years. It is assisting integration. More than 16,000 Ukrainians are in employment and we are endeavouring to boost that number.

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