Lorraine Clifford Lee (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I would like to ask the Tánaiste a number of questions about immigration and asylum. I will keep them as brief as possible because I know many other members want to make contributions.

The McMahon report, which was published last year, made a number of recommendations with regard to the direct provision and protection systems. The report was supposed to be fully implemented by July 2016. While some of the recommendations have been implemented, the more meaty ones have not been. I refer, for example, to the recommendation that individuals who have been in the asylum process for five years or more should be automatically granted leave to remain. Having spoken to practitioners in this area, it seems there has been a soft implementation of this recommendation on an ad hocbasis. Leave to remain is being granted to families, which is leaving many single men in a kind of limbo because they have not been granted leave to remain. Could the Tánaiste address that issue? The Minister of State, Deputy Stanton, indicated in the Seanad in July that this recommendation would be implemented when the Oireachtas returned after the summer.

On a related issue, the bifurcated system for asylum and subsidiary protection was supposed to be integrated into a single system. The Minister of State indicated that this was coming on stream fairly shortly. Having spoken to people involved in the processing of this, it appears that no progress has been made in this regard. I would appreciate it if the Tánaiste could give me some answers.

Does the Tánaiste intend to extend the remit of the Ombudsman for Children to children within the direct provision system? If not, can she explain why not?

I would also like to ask about the business permission visa system, which was suspended on 16 March last. The old version of the system allowed people to apply for residence if they were investing €300,000 and creating and maintaining at least two Irish jobs. What is happening in this regard? When will the system be reintroduced? A number of people in this country who are working on business proposals are in limbo. As a result, we are losing out on potential jobs and investment in business in Ireland.

My attention has been drawn to the requirement for a chef to be paid a minimum salary of €30,000 in order to be eligible for an employment permit. While there is a chronic lack of chefs in Ireland, the salary level of €30,000 at which this requirement has been set is far too high. Exemptions have been made for workers in other areas, including IT professionals and individuals working in the meat industry. I appeal to the Tánaiste to reduce the lower salary level to allow chefs to be employed under the work permits system.

People who make applications to the EU treaty rights section currently have to wait approximately ten months. This is in contravention of the directive, which states that applications should be processed within six months. This is having a significant impact on many people in this country. I ask the Tánaiste to address that issue.

The Tánaiste referred earlier to sham marriages. There are a number of issues with regard to the manner in which applications have to be made when EU nationals want to get married to non-EU nationals. There is now a special application process, including a personal interview with both parties. People are being racially profiled under this system. Some people have been refused permission to marry on the basis of statistics rather than individual assessment. More importantly, people who are deemed to have failed the interview are not being informed of the reasons for that failure. They are merely told they have 28 days to appeal the decision. It is not possible for people to appeal these decisions unless they are given correct information on the specific areas of their interviews on which they were failed. The timeframe I have mentioned does not allow people to get information from freedom of information requests. This needs to be addressed urgently because it is creating big problems.