Mr. Sean Garvey:

As Mr. Tyndall said, I will fill in some of the fine grain. We got 41 complaints against the International Protection Accommodation Service, IPAS, in 2020, and 25 of those related to transfers. As Mr. Tyndall said, there are a number of different scenarios through which people seek transfers. IPAS has been operating a policy but given the volume of people in centres, and what is quite a high volume of people looking to move from one centre to another, it takes the view that priority cases should be the ones most likely to move. We do not have an issue in principle with the idea that people who have more pressing circumstances should be the ones who get a move, possibly even ahead of other people whose circumstances may be less pressing. Mr. Tyndall cited, for example, access to education, medical services, training, educational opportunities and family reunification as being among the priority circumstances that IPAS would look at. In situations where people's requests for transfers have been turned down, where the requests have been in these areas, we have succeeded in getting IPAS to overturn decisions. For example, of the 25 transfer cases that were dealt with in 2020, eight were refusals that we got overturned when we engaged with IPAS.

We have had a couple of new scenarios in 2020 in regard to transfers. Mr. Tyndall highlighted the particular case of two people who had formed a relationship after they independently arrived into direct provision and they wanted to be accommodated as a couple. Following our intervention, we are happy to report that has since happened. There was another scenario where a woman was in a centre with a child, but her partner, who had been a resident of direct provision, was at that point living in the community with status. She sought a move to a place which was closer to him for family reunification purposes. That had been refused but that decision was reversed following our engagement.

Mr. Tyndall mentioned that one of the more significant sources of complaints was food and catering. That has significantly diminished over the past two years. While the wider move to the provision of own-door accommodation in the context of the White Paper is now, hopefully, starting to accelerate, over the last couple of years there has been a significant move within congregated settings to provide people with self-cooking facilities and a residents' shop where produce of the residents choosing can be got. Where we have visited centres, without exception, the residents have commented on how valuable they have found that and how independent it has made them feel to be able to select ingredients and prepare food of their own choosing. That has resulted in a significant reduction in the volume of complaints relating to food.

They would be the main sources. As Mr. Tyndall said, in the last two or three years, we have had a number of complaints relating to delays in people getting medical cards and PPS numbers, in particular. We have engaged with the Department of Social Protection and the HSE and, following that engagement, their processes for dealing with protection applicants getting access to those services has accelerated. That has resulted in a reduction in the number of complaints from those sources coming to us.

They would be the main subject areas or topic areas of complaints. I reiterate what Mr. Tyndall said on the reduction from 168 complaints in 2019 to 61 in 2020. I share Mr. Tyndall's confidence and belief that it is not a case of people having fewer issues but that, where people have issues, they are not reaching us. As Mr. Tyndall said in his opening remarks, we have provided facilities for people to reach us through Zoom meetings. We had scheduled 11 visits to the centres before the latest round of travel restrictions prevented us from doing them, and we facilitated those 11 meetings remotely. However, the uptake was considerably lower and we had a total of seven people across ten centres contacting us, whereas, at the one centre we managed to visit before the travel restrictions were reimposed, nine people reached us. That is an indication of the most successful way for us to engage with residents and, clearly, residents feel most comfortable engaging with us if it is face-to-face.

We have also found that our engagement with centre management on those visits has been very fruitful. Quite often, there are centre-specific issues where people are concerned or are not happy with certain things within centres.

We have found frequently that the core issue is communication, whether a lack of it or a mix-up in communication. As Mr. Tyndall said in his opening remarks, some people are simply reluctant to complain. They feel that by complaining, either their protection application will be compromised or their day-to-day treatment in the centre will be compromised. We have been doing this for nearly four years and we have not found any evidence of anybody being disadvantaged as a result of complaining but there is fear of it and it is articulated to us. As Mr. Tyndall said, and this works better in a face-to-face context, we try to reassure people that if they complain, it is their right to do so.

We have not seen any incidents of people who have complained being disadvantaged, either through their protection application or through their situation centre. Those are the main issues that have come to us through the year. The trend is for fewer centre-specific issues as the current programme of provision of self-cooking facilities and a residents' shop for getting produce is rolled out. That leads to an in-house reduction in complaints and externally, as Mr. Tyndall said, the right to work has made a significant change, since people can finance more independent aspects of living and so on. That was an issue in complaints raised with us too.