Mr. Colm O'Dwyer:

This is what I find. Perhaps our own petition does not lay this out precisely but the Senator is correct. It has been in place for two years and what is called a pilot programme only began last year. Mr. Kirwan and I have been involved in cases where obviously vulnerable people, including very disabled people, people in wheelchairs or people with severe PTSD, have not had any vulnerability assessment. Sometimes I take the following example. I cannot really talk about the individual case but it concerns a person in a wheelchair put in a direct provision centre comprising mobile homes where the reception is an awful long way away. These are simple examples. The vulnerabilities assessment for that person would show that because of her severe disability, it would be particularly difficult to be in that type of direct provision centre. She needs something different and more suitable for her disability.

There were legal proceedings about that and eventually a vulnerability assessment was done. There have been a large number of such cases. Mr. Kirwan may be able to elaborate on that. There have been a fair number of cases where people have had to effectively sue the Minister. These are asylum seekers who are very vulnerable in some cases. They have had to sue the Minister to get a vulnerability assessment. Even then, the way the assessment is set up is a two-stage process. Applicants do an initial, very limited interview and then there is what I would think of as the vulnerability assessment as a second stage. There can be an even longer delay. I do not know if the numbers Ms Gibney has given are for this first instance interview, which is very short, or the second, more substantial stage where the applicant meets medical practitioners and they come up with a plan of what would be suitable.

I can go into more details about this but it has been a failing. This was in existence before the White Paper. The White Paper has emphasised the fact these will be done and are important in deciding where people end up and what kind of accommodation is necessary for them. It should be happening. It should be a matter of course and done in accordance with our own regulations. It should be done within 30 working days of the application for asylum. That is one of the key points. If the new system as envisaged is to work properly, this would be a key part of it. They need to ramp it up. Given what we have said about the numbers, there must be a huge backlog. If only a couple of hundred people have had a vulnerability assessment and several thousand people have applied for asylum, there must be a huge backlog building up in that area as well as other areas in the process.