Yesterday saw the arrival of another small group of students from Gaza, all due to take up places at universities here.
Ireland is to the fore in managing to evacuate students from the war zone.
Education Correspondent Emma O'Kelly spoke to one student who arrived three weeks ago.
Twenty-year-old Malak Alsweirki expected to feel happiness after she arrived in Ireland to begin an academic journey she had imagined and dreamed about constantly as she and her family tried to survive in Gaza City.
But that feeling has not come.
"I'm really astounded by the amount of feelings I have. I only thought I would feel happiness but I’m going through the extreme opposite unfortunately," she said.
"Most of the time I have what I suppose is survivor’s guilt. When I eat, when I feel safe, being able to buy clothes and shoes, feeling warm, having a room to live in. I feel guilty 24/7 because my family now lives in a tent."
Malak arrived in Ireland three weeks ago in an evacuation of students from Gaza organised by the Department of Foreign Affairs and supported by 11 universities working together here.
She had been offered a place to study at Trinity College and another at Cambridge University.
But evacuation to the UK was proving far too complex and uncertain.
"The situation [in Gaza City] was escalating in a dramatic way and there was no time," she said.
When Ireland offered to evacuate her from Gaza City she jumped at the chance.
Malak is doing a Trinity College foundation course this year and will decide then whether to continue to pursue her studies at Trinity or to move to Cambridge.
She is one of a number of students in this group who chose Ireland over the UK, with others also offered places to study at some of Britain’s most prestigious universities.
Malak also received an offer from both Harvard and Yale in the US.
But an offer of a place from a top university means nothing if a student cannot get out of Gaza, and it is Ireland that has been to the fore in managing to evacuate students.
In what have been complex and sensitive operations, Ireland has managed to evacuate more than 70 students to date.
Representatives from Cambridge University travelled to Dublin shortly after the students' arrival to meet and offer support to Malak and other students.
"We were pleased to work closely with Trinity College Dublin to enable the swift and safe evacuation of students from Gaza, including Malak, and are grateful to our colleagues at TCD who worked tirelessly to facilitate this," Cambridge University told RTÉ News.
Malak used to live with her family in the Al Toffah neighbourhood east of Gaza City.
The name Al Toffah means 'apple trees’.
Before the Nakba of 1948, the area was home to numerous orchards.
"We had a beautiful garden, with olives, and grapes, and roses, and lemons and oranges," she said.
"And cats," she added.
But her family was forced to flee their home and neighbourhood for good in June, several months after the IDF ordered people to leave the area, and now the Al Toffah district has been completely wiped out and cleared by Israel.
"There is even no rubble left," Malak said, "my neighbourhood is now a 'buffer zone', that is what the Israelis call it."
During an earlier displacement, in December 2023, Malak's parents were shot by Israeli soldiers outside Al Azahar University, a designated safe zone where they had gone to find shelter. Her father was shot in the leg and her mother in the waist. Malak witnessed the shooting.
In June of this year the family found an apartment to rent in Gaza City.
The UN has described the situation in Gaza City as "nothing short of cataclysmic".
On Thursday, as Malak made her way to Jordan and on to Istanbul, her family joined thousands of other Palestinians, fleeing Gaza City as Israeli tanks moved in.
They paid the equivalent of $1,000 to hire a car to travel south.
Her parents, a university professor and a teacher, and her three siblings, the youngest of whom is 11, are now living in a tent.
"What scares me and makes me feel guilty is that I have a room and my family is going to live in a tent for the upcoming winter."
Malak attempts to phone her parents every day "but it's really difficult because they have no internet".
She panics if she is unable to make contact with them.
Of her generation, she said: "I am one of the few lucky people. At school we had big dreams, some girls wanted to study medicine, some wanted to become lawyers.
"Some of my friends have lost all of their families now and they are alone [in Gaza], with nothing."
