Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Yes. We will certainly come back to it at that stage. We will note and publish that information in the meantime. It is good to get it.

The next item of correspondence - we are nearly there - is No. 2554B, from the Secretary General of the Department of Justice and Equality, dated 14 November, responding to our request for information regarding asylum seekers. The information was requested by our secretariat as part of our periodic report work. There is also the next item, No. 2560B, from Mr. Aidan O'Driscoll, Secretary General of the Department of Justice and Equality, dated 5 November, providing information requested by the committee on direct provision centres. This is also to feed into our periodic report, which we will publish next week. For the benefit of people watching the meeting, I wish to highlight a couple of matters.

In No. 2554B, which contains some useful figures and statistics, the Department of Justice and Equality states the following. At the end of October there were 8,560 persons with active international protection claims in Ireland, with 4,198 applications being made between January and the end of October of this year. There were 6,760 persons in direct provision centres at the end of October. The number of asylum seekers in hotel accommodation was 1,433 at the end of October. The number of individuals currently residing in direct provision centres who have been granted leave to stay in the State is 778. The average length of stay in direct provision centres, the Department says, is 22 months. There is a chart in the correspondence, which we will publish. The Department goes on to state the average time it takes for an application for international protection to be completed. This was new to me, but the Department refers to the cases that were completed in October, in the last month, and seems to be saying it is shortening the procedure. What happens is that when people arrive and present themselves at the office, they are granted accommodation on the day and then, as soon as possible, they complete the questionnaire with all the information, making their application for international protection. It states here that for prioritised applications there will be an interview scheduled within four to five months. For non-prioritised applications it will take nine to ten months. Then, after the interview, it takes about two months, depending on the complexity of the case, for a decision to be recommended. The Department is saying that the processing time during October 2019 was 15 months and for prioritised cases it was 9.6 months. What are the criteria to be considered in determining whether an application is prioritised versus non-prioritised? That is new to me. I had not encountered it before. Members can see what the Department is saying. The figures are there and they are useful.

This is complemented by the next item of correspondence, No. 2560B, from the Secretary General of the Department, Aidan O'Driscoll, again providing information that we will need for our periodic report. He refers in this short letter to the numbers in direct provision, and I have given those figures. He states, "Because of a shortage of places in centres, there are now, as of 29th October 2019, 1,531 people are in emergency accommodation in hotels and guesthouses." He accepts that this is highly unsatisfactory and says that some time ago the Department put an advertisement in the national media looking for such centres. The Department further states that it held a competition on a regional basis for people to provide emergency accommodation centres - that is, accommodation through hotels and guest houses - and that, following the regional competitions, the Department is now in the mobilisation phase in the south-east, the midlands and the mid-west regions. Accommodation for the south-west and western regions is still on the way. For the mid-east region, which I presume includes Dublin, the closing date for submissions was 16 September and the valuation will commence shortly. I am providing all this information just by way of an update. The issue is very clear: because the accommodation centres are full, the Department has been trying to get emergency accommodation in various centres around the county. These are meant to be temporary. The Department says it could take three months, but that could be one or two years at the end of the day, depending on the numbers coming. The Department notes it has no control over the numbers arriving in the country. It must deal with people on the day they arrive and present at the office.

That is interesting information, some which will be in a periodic report.

Did the Deputy wish to comment on that?