Dr. Liam Thornton:

I will address the question on the culture of the Department and of the RIA. I have 20 years of freedom of information documents at my disposal. The Deputy is very generous in describing the attitude as "adversarial". I would put it more strongly but I am not going to right now. I fear it is much worse. A culture of disbelief has been documented in several reports. I recall documents obtained in a freedom of information request in 2008 that refer to a man who had a child with a woman and whose child was considered Irish because the woman was Irish. The man was in a direct provision centre and he asked whether he could be moved to a direct provision centre closer to his girlfriend and child. The case was referred to in the body of the email as another brain-teaser on direct provision. The response was that there was no obligation on the man to remain in direct provision and that it was not the Department's business if he wanted to live near the mother and child, the implication being that he may have had access to his own funds. That is just one example. There are more recent examples. The Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection started to plan for the increases in the direct provision allowance around July of last year. Quite wisely, it did not inform the Department of Justice and Equality until about 25 September 2018. An official in the Department of Justice and Equality who was asked to offer a comment or express views began by saying, "They are all working anyway." These are two of many unfortunate examples I have and will, due to the 20th anniversary of the system of direct provision, be making available towards the end of this year.