Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 12 November 2020

Select Committee on Children and Youth Affairs

Estimates for Public Services 2020
Vote 40 - Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (Further Revised)

Photo of Roderic O'GormanRoderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. There are a couple of points. Obviously, people are living in direct provision centres at the moment and some have been there for a long time. We all recognise that is not right. In living there for a long time, however, they have become involved in their local communities and we welcome that. One of the goals of the new system is that people will not be waiting such a long time to have their application for international protection decided on.

People are living for maybe two, three, four or more years in direct provision while they are waiting on a decision. One of the focuses will be that decisions will be made quickly and people will know definitively whether they have asylum here. I hope we can speed up the process, and that by doing so those who have been living in places like Clondalkin for a long time will be able to get a decision as to whether they have asylum. If they have asylum, they will have clarity, stability and security and be able to continue to build a new life for themselves in communities. Obviously, many of them will be moving onto local authority housing lists.

That ties into Deputy Ward's third question. He is correct that approximately 800 people in direct provision who have status to remain have not been able to move out because of the wider housing crisis. A number of points can be made on that issue. We have been working individually with certain NGOs to support to the movement of people who are in such a situation out of direct provision and into independent living within the community. De Paul and the McVerry Trust, in particular have been working on the issue with my Department and previously with the Department of Justice. I wish to recognise the great work being done by those two NGOs. There is provision in the Estimates for the continuation of that work. My Department is doing a wider piece of work with local authorities and the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage to ensure that where people have status to remain, we are in a position to move them out and onto local authority housing lists. That work is ongoing and I have spoken to the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage about the issue.

I agree with the Deputy on the issue of care planning. He will know that my Department and Tusla have to monitor what is being done on the ground. There is a balance to strike between getting good, valuable data back from the social workers on the ground about their individual cases that we can feed up to see if our national policies are working with the need to avoid overburdening social workers and social care workers to an extent that they are taken away from front line work and end up just filling out forms. I definitely take on board the point made by Deputy Costello about the importance of making sure that we are asking the right questions and measuring the right things.

On the issue relating to PPS numbers, we will follow that up with the Department of Social Protection. I ask the Deputy to send me an email and we will follow that up. It is a matter for the Department of Social Protection, but we can also follow up on it because if it is blocking somebody who has come to the country seeking international protection from accessing school, we want to get that resolved as quickly as possible.

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