Mr. Nick Henderson:

There are 34 centres. In our experience, there is a wide range of types of management from good to bad to sometimes very bad. One of the critical problems we have with direct provision is the lack of vacancies. There is something like only 49 free beds across the entire direct provision estate.

The effect of that is a severe pressure on vacancies and hence pressure on people to leave if they have status. There are 460 people in direct provision who have status but who cannot leave because of the housing crisis. There is also pressure on people who, in the example that Deputy Wallace gave, are studying and maybe spending a night or two elsewhere, and people not in direct provision who have an existing outstanding asylum application and are encountering great difficulties in entering direct provision. We have a three day a week drop-in centre where we receive and assist many people and in our experience it takes up to, or more than, five rounds of correspondence with the Department of Justice and Equality to get that person re-accommodated. We may eventually get them accommodated but not immediately and while that person waits, he or she relies on existing night to night homelessness accommodation, a service that exists only in Dublin, not in Galway and Cork.