Ms Tanya Ward:

The Children's Rights Alliance is an umbrella group, which brings together more than 100 member organisations with the goal of making Ireland one of the best places in the world to be a child. We were members of the working group appointed by the then Minister for Justice, Deputy Frances Fitzgerald. It was our job on the working group to represent the interests of children and young people and a lot of our work was informed by our member organisations, which put significant time and investment into the working group process. The human rights issues I witnessed during that time were some of the worst I had ever witnessed. There was huge institutionalisation, not only of the people living in the system but of the people working in the system and managing it. There was huge overcrowding, hunger and welfare issues, mental health issues and issues of basic human dignity. One of the only positives I saw was that children were able to go to school and that made a big difference, both to children and families. By and large, though, they were living in abject poverty, isolation and exclusion.

There have been significant changes since the working group process. The Department of Children and Youth Affairs carried out a consultation with children and young people in the direct provision system and, while some of what they found was very disturbing, there has been some action on it by the Department of Justice and Equality. The direct provision payment for children was €9.60 for a 15-year period but it has now increased to the McMahon recommendation of €29.80. The first increase was by Deputy Joan Burton when she was Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection and another was made by Deputy Leo Varadkar, with the most recent increase being put in place by the current Minister, Deputy Regina Doherty. The Ombudsman for Children can now take complaints from children in direct provision. There was no public oversight of the direct provision system at the time and it was allowed to continue with poor procurement procedures, no public oversight by bodies such as Health Information and Quality Authority, HIQA, and no proper complaints mechanisms, meaning that ill treatment and maladministration were allowed to continue. There have been improvements in cooking facilities and a significant work has gone into the development of national standards for refugee accommodation. Our view of how to change direct provision is that we need to accommodate families in own-door accommodation in small clusters, with social care from people working on site.

Some of these families are very vulnerable but, at the same time, they were being institutionalised in these institutions by people with no experience of working in direct provision or working with refugees at all. In our view, the national standards could provide for that. One key recommendation is that families should be in own-door accommodation.

Another improvement was a reduction of overcrowding over the period. There was certainly an effort to try to address that because it was inhumane. While on the working group, one centre I visited had four women living in a hotel room with their beds side by side. They spoke different languages and had been living like that for four years. That was the kind of overcrowding we were seeing at that time.

The last improvement is that people who had been in the system for five years or more had their claims expedited and several thousand refugees got out of direct provision as a result.

In terms of where we go next, I must say that some of these improvements are being overshadowed by the fact that we have more than 500 people seeking asylum, including children, now in these emergency accommodation facilities that are very close to situations where children are living in homeless accommodation. They and their health needs have not been assessed. We are concerned that some of the children do not have access to schools, nor do the parents have support to find a school, and we are also concerned about child protection issues in these centres. Direct provision centres must comply with Children First procedures and have a dedicated liaison person. We do not know what is happening with these emergency centres and we are concerned about that.

We must implement the national standards that are yet to be published if we are serious about changing the system. We also must have unannounced public inspections. It is not good enough for a private operator to look at whether the provider complies with the contract. We must have a body like HIQA. That is the only way we will get the assurance that we will never go back to the direct provision of the past.

The last point I want to bring to the attention of the committee is in the area of welfare and child protection. We know at the moment that, within the Reception and Integration Agency, the role of social worker who has overall responsibility for overseeing the system has been vacant since November. That is a long time. At the same time, we have emergency facilities opening. Who is the watchdog? Who is keeping an eye on what is happening for these children throughout the system and in these emergency facilities?

I also want to bring attention to unaccompanied minors within the system. The working group met many of them and the Children's Rights Alliance has met many since. Many of our member organisations have been communicating with us and the main issue coming from them is that oftentimes asylum applications for unaccompanied minors are not being lodged by the social worker when they arrive in the country. They are discovering this at the age of 18, at which stage they are often sent into the direct provision system.

In summary, there have been significant changes since the working group report. There are also significant challenges which must be dealt with. I absolutely think those challenges are not insurmountable and can be addressed through good decision making and by using the evidence.