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Ireland is committed to offering asylum to 4,000 Syrian refugees with 1,100 expected by next September according to the Tánaiste.
Services will also be offered to some 200 unaccompanied minors who will go into foster care, organised by Túsla.
Speaking from Greece on RTÉ's Today with Sean O'Rourke show Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald said it was been an overwhelming trip.
“There were 5,000 people arriving every day on to the islands until recently, now it’s 150 a day, there are 66,000 in refugee camps , 40 camps, I’ve been visiting some of them, meeting some refugees due to come to Ireland.
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She said they are being assessed by a team from the Department of Justice and three members of an Garda Síochána who are doing security vetting, finger printing.
“I’ve been meeting with babies and toddlers, the families who have travelled very dangerous journeys,” she said.
“By the end of this year Ireland will have taken in 800, we made a proactive commitment, it’s what the Irish people want.
She said people know what the humanitarian disaster has been like for Greece and that was why she wanted to go there and meet the people.
“There have been delays across Europe - 8,000 out of 160,000 have been relocated within Europe,” she said.
Delays in registrations
She spoke of the difficulties getting the process organised on the ground in Greece.
“ What I’ve been hearing is that they now have now actually registered every person who is in Greece who is an asylum seeker.”
Ms Fitzgerald said the delays were at the Greek end rather than in Ireland, mainly because people were not registered.
“ Just over a year ago people were still moving through - they where arriving and they were going straight through the borders, up to Sweden, up to Germany, that’s where they wanted to go, that’s where many of them had families.
“Then the borders closed, then we had to get help out to Greece to make sure they established the centres where they could register people , to encourage the asylum seekers to register , most of them just wanted to move through Greece.
The Greeks allocate the asylum seekers to each country and then the country meets the people in person to take the details about the family and all of their details, she said.
Ms Fitzgerald said she told the Greek prime minister that Ireland would take 1100 asylum seekers from Greece by September which was the full total Ireland would be taking from the country.
The State will also take 600 directly from refugee camps and another group of 500 from refugee camps in Lebanon. It sends teams out to meet the people there.
Ireland was due to take 600 from Italy but has not yet because Italy will not allow for the security vetting that Ireland wants to be done by the gardaí, she said.
Unaccompanied minors
During her visit Ms Fitzgerald met unaccompanied minors between 16 and 18 who are in a hostel run by volunteers ,which is the age group that Ireland plans to take.
This age group was “challenging” to get the right services for because of all they had been through and because they have been out of education for several years, she said. “They are very traumatised people.”
The number of unaccompanied minors Ireland would take depends on the type of services Ireland can provide through Túsla. Ms Fitzgerald said it would d be 20 in the first instance but Ireland was also looking at a group of unaccompanied minors from Calais. She said it would be about 200.
She said it was about getting the right places because in the past there were unaccompanied asylum seeker saying in hostels whereas now they are placed in foster care.
Ireland was balancing the number it could and should take with the huge humanitarian need. She said the State’s approach had been in an EU context -according to GDP and various numbers which gave Ireland a goal of 4,000.