Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate having a further opportunity to speak in the House on migration, specifically this evening on the issue of international protection. Before speaking to the specifics of the debate, it is important to set out the context. As we are living it, and have lived it over the past three years, it is easy to lose sight of how unprecedented these circumstances have been. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we have seen the largest movement of people across the European Continent since the Second World War.

That has necessitated the largest humanitarian response across the European Union since its foundation. Ireland's part in that has been to play host to approximately 100,000 Ukrainians who have fled here.

At the same time as Ireland and Europe are responding to that crisis, we are, as a continent, seeing a significant increase in the number of international protection applicants, driven by wars and conflicts across north Africa and the Middle East. All of this has generated a huge effort and response by the Irish public. More than 16,000 people from Ukraine are staying in homes of people offered to them by Irish people through the offer a home scheme and the Irish Red Cross scheme. In cities and towns across the country community groups have been established to support the integration of people who have fled here from Ukraine and other countries.

I recognise that there is concern about the international protection system as it stands, the procedures and processes in place for international protection applicants, the means of accommodating those who flee here and what this will mean for those who come here. The unprecedented scale of the challenge the State has faced in the last two years has exacerbated the flaws in a model the State has relied upon and was already in need of reform to meet the needs of 21st century migration, even before the war in Ukraine. Despite this, reforms have been pursued and further reforms will be outlined in the coming weeks.

This evening, I will speak to the facts around international protection, the reforms that are under way and my intentions with regard to accommodation. International protection means fairly and humanely examining a claim for asylum, sheltering and supporting people while that claim is assessed and giving the people the right to stay here in safety where that is needed. Where it is found that they do not have a legal basis for their claim, those individuals will not be allowed to stay in the State.

In 2023, there were about 13,200 applications for international protection. Until recently, Ireland was well below the EU average when it came to the number of people coming here seeking international protection. We have seen a big increase in numbers in 2022 and 2023 but that still brings us in line with the European averageper capitaof people seeking international protection. Where people claim international protection, they must do so at the International Protection Office. Each person that enters the international protection process is fingerprinted and photographed. These fingerprints are checked against Eurodac, an EU immigration database which stores the fingerprints of asylum applicants and those who have crossed borders illegally. Character and conduct checks are also carried out with An Garda Síochána at the point that consideration is being given to someone actually receiving refugee status or permission to remain in the State. While a person’s application is being assessed, he or she is provided with accommodation by the State alongside a basic payment of €38.80 per week. People are now entitled to work after six months in the process.

These are the bare-bone facts about what happens when someone is in the process. Right now, there are two major challenges in the international protection process. First, for decades, it took too long for someone to get a decision on whether he or she would receive international protection. That is why the Minister for Justice, Deputy McEntee, has provided significant additional resources for the IPO to speed up the time in which international protection applications are decided on. Staff numbers have been doubled and in 2024, €34 million was provided to continue to expand the resources in the IPO. As a result of this effort, the number of decisions being taken has tripled and applications from safe countries are now being processed in under three months.

Following this significant investment in staff and the re-engineering of the processes and new technology, the IPO has almost doubled the number of decisions made in 2023 over the 2022 figures. The IPO increased the number of monthly determinations to over 1,000 per month in November of last year compared with 281 the previous November. By ensuring people have their applications decided more quickly, we will reduce the time they are in State-owned accommodation and that will in turn reduce the quantity of State-owned accommodation that we need.

The second major challenge is the accommodation itself. As every Deputy recognised, the State is too reliant on private providers. Officials in my Department are working intensively to source accommodation from the private sector. Contrary to what has been rumoured, we do not confiscate or CPO buildings. We are offered buildings by private providers and we take them because we need them. This is a system that was designed for a different era, one when we were facing much lower numbers of arrivals. It was designed to be temporary 20 years ago and we recognise there is a need for substantial reform.

While plans were set out in the White Paper in early 2021 for how we would make this reform, the need to immediately respond to Ukrainians when they arrived here from February 2022 onwards meant I had to reallocate staff whole-scale in my Department to meet their immediate needs. We have now moved away from that emergency response to Ukraine and it is clear that our priority has to be reform of the international protection system in terms of accommodation. I am not comfortable when we have to contract the last operating hotel in a town or village to ensure that women and children do not go homeless. I am not comfortable with the situation that we are not in a position to accommodate 700 individuals.

We need to have a system where the State holds the reins on a fair accommodation system, and on where that accommodation is located and its standards. Without that approach, we cannot put in place the supports for those who arrive here and we will not be able to spend the time we need to engage with communities and will continue to rely on factors outside our control. Providing an accommodation model with a central State-owned element will also allow us to ensure that the scale of accommodation provided is commensurate with the area in which it is located.

Fundamental reform of this system is long overdue. I am currently engaging with colleagues across the Government on proposals on a future accommodation strategy. I will bring this to the Cabinet and publish it in the coming weeks. I urge Deputies across the House to work with us on this because whatever their view on it is, a central element of any state is that it should be in a position to support those who arrive in it seeking safety. By providing a central State-owned element to accommodation, alongside the work the Minister for Justice is doing, we will achieve that.

All of us in this Chamber have a choice. Do we want to bring Ireland down a divisive and rancorous path which puts forward false narratives about migrants and refugees or do we take our responsibilities as elected representatives seriously? Do we engage and explain but convey only facts and demonstrate that we can put in place a system that processes applicants swiftly and accommodates people in suitable accommodation, one that represents this country and our long history of emigration? We have seen what happens in other countries when paranoia and inaccurate statements about migration are promoted. We see where that leads and I do not think that is somewhere we want to see our politics lead to here.

I thank Deputies for their ongoing engagement and support. The issue of engagement has been raised. Deputy Mattie McGrath asked about our community engagement. We have five civil servants in our community engagement team and two former public servants who work to support them. That team, in the last week, has had multiple meetings with community groups and representatives around the country. It has given detailed briefings on where we are opening new accommodation and has responded to countless rumours where people have named random buildings and asked whether they will be used. That is a huge job because there are people out there who are deliberately conveying misinformation. That gets out there and we need to respond. Our team responds in the best way it can by providing accurate information on whether the Department is looking at a particular building. We will continue to work to strengthen that response. Many Deputies come to me quietly and recognise that they have received a call from the community engagement team that allowed them to provide important, accurate information to their constituents on proposals for accommodation in their area.

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