Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 26 May 2020
Special Committee on Covid-19 Response
Congregated Settings: Direct Provision Centres
Ms Oonagh Buckley:
We signed the contract on 16 March. The decision was taken the previous week that we would have to move people. Having signed the contract on 16 March, we moved the first residents on 18 March. When I say that happened much more quickly than normal, I am not exaggerating. As the committee knows, we would normally take some weeks to engage with the local community and we would probably be able to shape the residents that needed to travel and so forth. In this case, however, we had to move populations from five different locations, four of which were in Dublin, to a number of areas. Cahersiveen was only one.
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