Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 18 April 2024

Public Accounts Committee

2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 40 - Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth

9:30 am

Mr. Kevin McCarthy:

First, it will obviously be a policy matter for Government and governments across Europe to decide what happens and what the legal framework is around what they want to happen beyond March 2025. We are not in a position to say anything about that, other than that the Minister, Deputy McEntee, participates in those discussions at European level. There will be policy calls made domestically and nationally and every member state will consider how transition beyond either the expiry of the temporary protection directive or through some extension. Certainly from our point of view, the policy change and direction of travel in terms of arrival rates and the numbers we are seeing leaving our accommodation leads us to be thinking about a future phase that involves a much greater movement to independence among those BOTPs who are here, and that is what we will be supporting. There is not an entitlement to accommodation under the temporary protection directive-----