Ms Oonagh Buckley:

I will distinguish between emergency accommodation and direction provision centres. As the Deputy will know, we have had many complaints about direction provision centres being opened with people not being informed and centres being landed into communities. We know we need to improve our communication on that. We are working very hard whenever a direction provision centre opens once we have completed the contractual negotiations. Even in the short time I have been in the Department there have been a number of instances where we have opened negotiations but an actual direct provision centre has not resulted from it. In those cases, there would be absolutely no point in talking to people. We know we need to communicate with the local authorities which might have issues with fire safety etc. Then, of course, we need to engage with the local community about concerns over the nature of people coming, which can be allayed fairly swiftly. They also have concerns about issues like GP services, schools etc. We know we need to get better at those kinds of things.

Emergency accommodation is different because we are scrambling around trying to find places to put people. The particular people the Deputy mentioned had to be moved out of Dublin because one of our centres in Dublin is closing.