Ms Rosemary Hennigan:

Last year we opted in to the reception conditions regulations, under which there is a set of requirements which the State should follow. For example, regulation 3 requires that people be given information when they first arrive on their rights and entitlements and organisations that may be able to help them. In our experience that is not happening. People are arriving in, particularly from the emergency centres, who do not know where they should be going, how to make an application for asylum, how to get legal aid, how to apply for a PPS number or a GP card, or how to gain basic access to medicines and prescriptions. They are arriving and it is simply a case of fire-fighting. This means that the benefits of reforms which may have been introduced or which are under way following the McMahon report are not being felt in practice. There is a fire-fighting exercise under way in the Department of Justice and Equality, alongside which we need to see a commitment being given to medium to long-term reform of the system overall because conditions are just unacceptable.