Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am sure the Chair will give Mr. O'Driscoll plenty of time to develop his points but he is not going to give me plenty of time. On direct provision, two committees have been set up, which is good. However, they have been set up as a result of what happened; they were not set up proactively. They were not set up because problems had been highlighted repeatedly. I have been to Oughterard and was at that terrible meeting, the worst meeting of my life. That happened for many reasons. One of the major reasons was the vacuum created by the Department of Justice and Equality. It was quite obvious what was going to happen down the road because of the way in which the Department continued to deal with direct provision. I am a little concerned about operation transformation, which is an unfortunate name. It would have been great if the Department had come forward in the last few years and said that it could not keep going with the current set-up. We now have how many people in hotels? Is it 1,300? Does anybody have the figure?