Sharon Keogan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

This year, Ireland's population will increase by about 90,000 people, the fourth highest annual increase since the Famine. Some 27,700 of that figure will be due to natural change. More than 61,000 of the figure is net migration. This figure, massively inflated from our yearly average, is obviously due to the intake of Ukrainians fleeing the war. According to figures released by the Government this week, 79% of these people have notified the Government that they will require accommodation. It is right and honourable that we as a country should help those in need and do all within our power to assist those we can. It is also the case that attempting to do that which is outside our power ends up serving no one and it is past time we acknowledged the inconvenient truth, rather than accusing anyone voicing it of not caring about Ukrainian people. These people need long-term homes, secure jobs, education for their children and grassroots ties with their local communities. There is a limit to how many people we can provide that for, and that limit has already been passed. There are 10,800 people in emergency accommodation, 60,000 households on local authority housing waiting lists and tens of thousands of young people frozen out of the housing market. I am not sure what jigsaw the Cabinet is looking at but unlimited inward migration does not appear to fit into the picture the rest of us are looking at. Today's edition of The Irish Timescontains a very worrying article. It relates to thousands of asylum seekers arriving into Dublin Airport with no travel documents. Between January and July this year, 2,915 people travelled into Dublin Airport and did not produce travel documents to border management officials, meaning they were refused leave to land. Of those, 2,232, or 77%, then claimed asylum.

Lastly, many of us have huge concerns about the Department of Defence's misnamed Building the Ecosystem event happening today in the Aviva Stadium, which is actually a military event with international representatives from the arms industry. The event subheading, "Identifying connections for collaboration in security, defence and dual-use technologies", does not serve to ease the concerns of many people in this country who sense that our military neutrality is being gradually eroded. Just whom is Ireland to collaborate on its security with, and to what end? I caution anyone with ambitions for Ireland to be a key player in the military field that our size and our power makes us more likely to be a pawn than any other piece. Ireland's neutrality has served us well, and I, alongside many in this country, do not want to see it undermined in service of special interests half a world away.