Jim O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay South, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. Tyndall and his colleagues for coming before the committee. I think their involvement in the direct provision process since April 2017 has helped it. I found the two reports prepared by the Ombudsman very helpful. I am pleased that the Ombudsman is satisfied with the level of co-operation he is getting from the Department of Justice and Equality. We all agree and in fairness to the committee, we know quite a lot about direct provision from the work we have done and obviously if people were staying in these centres for a short period, there would not be an issue with them to a large extent. I suppose the problem is the length of time that people are spending there.

In his report the Ombudsman states that the average length of time for a decision to be made in the asylum process is around 16 months. Is there anything he can recommend that would speed up that process, or what is his assessment as to what is taking that length of time?