Colm Brophy

that they would, in conjunction with the member state, provide the information to Ukrainians who've left as to how they can safely return.

And that's a very important part of what they, as a government, and we want to support them in doing that, want to see for the Ukrainian citizens who are here.

Well, no war zone, by definition, is safe.

But people make choices all the time.

That's why, literally, as I said, over 1.2 million Ukrainians across Europe have chosen to return to their home country.

And I presume they're making those choices for a variety of reasons.

No, no, what we are doing, and let's be very clear about this, and when the government makes this decision, what we want to do is we want to put in place supports for Ukrainians who want to do that.

We will also be looking, as I said quite clearly, to make sure that for other groups of Ukrainians who want to transition from temporary protection to residence, that we will look at how we can establish a more permanent residency for Ukrainians,

And we'll also look at how we can support vulnerable Ukrainians who are in our country and who would not be in a position probably to return to Ukraine.

So I would absolutely want to disagree with you describing that as incentivising.

What we are saying is, and I think this is very important, that for Ukrainians who are making that choice, and some of them make it, by the way, for family reasons, they make it for a whole host of reasons, that we're going to be as generous as we can to you in returning in the way that we were generous to you when you came.

We believe that what we want to do is to say to people, if that's what your choice is, then we want to be able to be there and to help you in doing it.

Well, it'll be interesting to see.

We have actually an interesting... We don't have definitive, but we have some indications.

We have about 80,000 Ukrainians who are here with us.

We started off with over 100,000 plus.

So a lot of Ukrainians have already left the country.

Now, whether they have returned to Ukraine or whether they have returned to other European countries...

And that information is not as clear.

But it's quite obvious that there is movement within the Ukrainian community already, with Ukrainians in some instances directly choosing to return to Ukraine, in some instances relocating to countries which are closer to Ukraine, which enables them to be able to go in and out of Ukraine on a more frequent basis.