Ms Oonagh Buckley:

If, for example, a person presents and mentions during his or her initial contact with RIA that he or she has a particular gender orientation or whatever, we take that into account as best we can when placing him or her in our centres. This is always balanced against the constant pressure to find people a bed for the night.

Vulnerabilities can also become apparent some time into the process. This is particularly true of things such as mental health issues. These are often detected by the management of a direct provision centre and, if appropriate and if it does not involve invading people's privacy, these vulnerabilities are brought to the attention of RIA and we then try to manage the issue and to put support services in place.