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

She gave a lot of information and hope to a lot of people. I will not insult anyone's intelligence by telling them that it is complex legislation, because we all know that. We just need to progress it now and I hope we get that done in this Dáil session.

Senator Fitzpatrick touched on the cost-rental model. I am a big fan of that, too. Senator Craughwell spoke about the Defence Forces. We are rebuilding the Defence Forces. We are now seeing a big investment into buildings and equipment. We have great ships and planes. All these things are either with us or on order. We are making building improvements, too. As we all know, the real difficulty with an economy where there is full employment and even before that, is with recruiting and retaining personnel. I do not think this is just a matter of pay. If you look at pay levels in our Defence Forces when compared with the UK, US or France, they compare very favourably, even when adjusted for the cost of living. One can join the Defence Forces at age 18 and be earning €40,000, including allowances, by the age of 21. Then, you can have your college paid for. It is not as unattractive a pay offer as people may say it is. There are other issues and deeper problems as to why people will not join and why, when they do, they leave so quickly. We know about some of those.

Senator Keogan mentioned the issue of refugee accommodation and the fact that we have to accommodate people in tents. The truth is that it is all we have at the moment. Only in the past year or so, more than 100,000 people have come to our country either as refugees from Ukraine or those who are seeking international protection. We need to be honest with ourselves about this. I know some people make the argument that we should say the country is full and that people should not come here, but they will continue to come here. Some 6 million people have left Ukraine. It is not a surprise that a small percentage - 1% or 2% of them and that is all - have come to Ireland. Horrible things are happening across the world such as war, oppression, dictatorships and climate change. They are going to keep coming.

Ten or 15 years ago, the United Kingdom decided to become a country that had a hostile environment to migration. That was the official government policy. They said: "Let us have a hostile environment for migrants". They left the European Union in part because they wanted to be able to control their borders. They now accommodate refugees and asylum seekers on barges. They sometimes even detain them. Yet, this does not stop them coming. Look at the numbers of those who are now travelling on boats from France to Britain. President Trump promised to build a wall and he separated parents from their children. Yet, record numbers of migrants are going into the US. Italy elected a far-right government largely to stop migration. Look what happened in Lampedusa only in the past couple of weeks. It is totally naive and wrong to think that people are not going to keep coming. They are. We have to try to manage it as best as we can, make sure decisions are made quickly and that people are treated as humanely as they can be.