Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

All members have been sent the submission from the Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland that contains many photographs of the interiors of direct provision centres. As soon as I saw how cramped and crowded and on top of each other people were, it reminded me of playing house as a kid, with bricks and stones and lumps of planks, and of pushing everything together so we could all lie down together and have a mess. That is no way to treat human beings but the evidence for it in the context of Covid is quite shocking.

The reality is that the HSE has given advice for all congregated settings to the effect that, during Covid, non-family members sharing a room are considered to be a household. We have a particular difficulty with this in direct provision because of the overcrowding to which I have just referred but also because, much of the time, people who are sharing rooms do not speak the same language, are not of the same religion and do not get to know each other. Do the witnesses agree with that advice? If they do not agree with it in the context of direct provision, have they ever objected to it, sought clarification on it or looked for it to be changed?