I ask about a matter related to the serious and urgent question of how we in Ireland can best manage our collective response in offering support to those who have come here fleeing Russian brutality in Ukraine. This morning, Labour Party Deputies and Senators wrote to the Minister's colleague, the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Deputy O'Gorman, who is taking overall responsibility for co-ordinating the national response. We wrote to offer our support in assisting with that national response and effort and to offer constructive engagement in highlighting issues that have arisen in cities, towns and communities around the country. We have copied that letter to the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, and also to the Taoiseach. We did so because we believe that in the face of war and barbarism and this brutal Russian aggression, our best outcomes will come from co-operation, constructive engagement and not from the sort of macho posturing and shouting that sometimes passes for democratic debate in this Chamber and about which the Ceann Comhairle has rightly been critical.

In the spirit of constructive engagement we have welcomed the initiative of the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, seeking support from Opposition parties in offering suggestions for vacant housing sites that could be used to house those coming here from Ukraine on a temporary basis. We have welcomed that call and are compiling a list of sites in conjunction with our network of local councillors around the country. We will be sending that list to the Minister. In my and the Minister's constituency of Dublin Bay South we will be proposing Baggot Street hospital, which has been mooted by my colleague, Councillor Dermot Lacey, and others, be utilised and that other vacant institutions such as, for example, the Avalon hostel on Aungier Street, could also be utilised for accommodation.

There has been a really strong response in Ireland and the awful war has shown the people's generosity of spirit. However, issues have arisen that are not trivial and require a co-ordinated response. In particular, we want to know what format the newly announced Cabinet subcommittee on co-ordinating the Ukraine response will take. With respect to accommodation, what is the role of International Protection Accommodation Services, IPAS, compared with the role of local councils, in co-ordinating the accommodation of our Ukrainian guests? We have heard concerns at local level about access to safeguarding measures for women and children in congregated settings and access to primary healthcare, GPs and mental health supports.

I am also hearing from local council officials of the need for a clear funding stream to enable councils to work with local and community voluntary groups to offer supports to Ukrainian guests and those who are hosting them here. I am thinking of the sort of networking events we have seen so successfully carried out in the Swan leisure centre in Rathmines and in other settings across the country where groups have come together on a voluntary basis to assist and support Ukrainian families and individuals coming here. We need that clear funding stream. As such, I would welcome a response from the Minister on that co-ordination of an approach to welcoming and showing support to Ukrainians.

I thank the Deputy. I agree with her comments on the need for a co-ordinated response to how we welcome, look after, care for and get back on their feet the people displaced by the war in Ukraine. I also agree with her on the form of politics that is going to work best to deliver that and very much welcome her willingness to work with the Ministers, Deputies O'Gorman and Darragh O'Brien, in coming forward with practical solutions because we must be practical and quick here to provide housing, shelter and a whole range of other different supports.

I also agree with the Deputy regarding the example of the Baggot Street hospital. It is a perfect example of such a facility. In the Cabinet's discussion on Tuesday it was included as one of the projects we are looking to refurbish and bring back into use. The Deputy knows Baggot Street hospital. While there has been some work going on it for the last decade or two, it has been lying idle and empty in the middle of a city-centre village. I support bringing it back to life, initially for displaced Ukrainian people, but also then getting over this inertia that seems to be in our system that allows buildings to lie derelict and has allowed vacancy to exist during a housing crisis. In some ways, one of the advantages we can take out of this crisis is that we then develop and open up buildings that have been shut for so long and refurbish them quickly.

The role of IPAS is critical because it has the expertise. This is a very complex and difficult issue. We have experience from the Syrian refugees and the Afghan refugees more recently. Going back over the years, IPAS has the best expertise on how we integrate and bring a welcome. However, it cannot shoulder the burden on its own. It cannot be responsible for the long-term assimilation of people. The whole discussion at Cabinet and the paper the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, brought to us this week, which was agreed, was to ensure the Department with responsibility for housing really steps up now, as well as local authorities. They have a critical role. We must designate key individuals within local authorities who work with community groups and other agencies of the State and accommodation providers, so this matter is not just left to IPAS. The service will not be able to manage the numbers, scale and long-term work that needs to be done. Its expertise is in managing immediate crises. It is about a co-ordinated approach between the local authorities, the Department with responsibility for housing and a range of other Government bodies, including the Departments of Social Protection, Health and Education. Central and critical to that will be a new Cabinet subcommittee being established so we as Ministers can ensure the system is responding. That door is open for co-operation with Opposition parties of every colour and hue to help make it work.

I thank the Minister for the response and the constructive engagement. My colleague, Deputy Duncan Smith, has raised a number of practical ways we can ensure a more co-ordinated national response because that is the issue. It is about co-ordinating the response and co-ordinating the national effort.

The point the Minister made about IPAS is welcome. It is clear local authorities are stepping up in a huge way. They and council officials are dealing and will deal with a large number of front-line measures to support Ukrainian families and individuals coming here. However, they need clear funding streams to enable them to do that. They need flexibility in working with community and voluntary groups that have also stepped up.

We also need to see supports in place for the Red Cross, which has taken on a huge responsibility in assessing the suitability of accommodation and has already reached out to other entities and agencies for support in that. There is, for example, a way in which current or retired community welfare officers could be engaged to help those seeking to access supports. Visiting the Ukraine support centre in Cork Street, I saw just how many civil and public servants are already doing that and offering that support. However, in recent weeks I visited a community hall in my and the Minister's constituency where families were sleeping on mats on the floor. Clearly, that is not ideal and it was only short-term but there is a real uncertainty about the national co-ordination of what should be a national and collective effort.

There has been and is, and the fact is that we have been able to manage 25,000 is unprecedented. There has never been a case of such numbers coming so quickly and we will manage the further numbers to come.

It is not only Government. It is coming from the bottom up. The Minister of State at the Department of Health, Deputy Anne Rabbitte, has informed me that in Waterford there are 20 people in the local authority working in terms of providing exactly that sort of response. Scouting Ireland, up in Larch Hill in the old hills of Dublin, is converting accommodation. An old convent in Templemore will come online in the next few days and it will provide a welcome home for people. There are further convents, in Loughrea and in Gort. There are numerous examples across the country. Those measures, combined with almost 2,000 houses under the pledge scheme which are coming on stream, are becoming available to the local authorities to place people in addition to the hotels, the other City West accommodation-----

Student accommodation.

-----and student accommodation. There is a plethora of different facilities being provided. It is difficult but my sense is it is working. We have no choice. It has to work. We have to provide an open door.