Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I find myself wanting to agree with most of what Senator Chambers just said. We need a debate here on childcare. There is not a family, particularly in cities, which is not finding it extremely difficult. I compliment her on the conference on women's health. Maybe some of my younger male colleagues might do something similar for men. I am a bit over the hill myself. The bit about Mayo I can just about stomach but we will get over that.

We are coming to a time when the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Michael McGrath, will have to deal with public service pay. My former colleagues in the Defence Forces in PDFORRA and the Representative Association of Commissioned Officers, RACO, have both balloted their members and both want to be allowed to affiliate with the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. It is imperative that the Minister for Defence engages with both organisations immediately. Let us put this thing to bed for once and for all. It has been going on for far too long.

There are a couple of issues that need to be addressed urgently in respect of refugees arriving from Ukraine. The initial support for refugees coming from Ukraine is beginning to find cracks coming into the system. While the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, is doing a tremendous job and all the other Cabinet members are rolling in behind that to get the job done, there is resentment building up in respect of two areas on which I am being contacted. One concerns those coming from other countries where there is war such as Afghanistan, Yemen and Syria, who are not being treated in the same way. It has been suggested to me that there is a form of racism now finding its way into our system. This is something of which we must be very careful. The other is the young people in Ireland who cannot get into housing. They are now beginning to ask why this can happen for those people but not for themselves? We need much more explanation and people need to be made aware of what exactly is going on. Sympathy wanes very quickly in this world. We all know that. I have been on the border there and my colleague, Senator Dooley, has been there. By God, if you have been out there the sympathy would not wane but that is not the point.

Today, I also heard that we are bringing military barracks back into service. I do not know how many of them we have left. I think we flogged off most of them and the ones that we did not flog off we let go to rack and ruin. Mullingar is a prime example of a place that is available and should be used. I do not know what the situation is in Castlebar barracks. I do not know if it is gone but it was in poor repair anyway. I believe the barracks in Longford belonged to Longford County Council. We need to explain to people and we need to prepare any barracks we have around the country. Sadly, there is a lesson we can never forget, which is that we need to rethink the selling off of assets that we may need in the future.