Ms Sinéad Gibney:

I will share these answers with my colleagues. I will take care of the question about delay asked by the Chairman and then talk about the suite of supports we envisage. The question about why they are slipping is one the committee needs to put to the Minister. I believe the Minister is due to appear before this committee very shortly, so I would encourage it to do that. To provide more detail about what we are concerned in terms of that slippage, I mentioned the issue of driver licences, which has such a significant impact on access to employment. This is about integration from day one and allowing people to start really contributing to society. If they do not have a driver licence, they cannot then access employment in many cases and their integration is delayed as a result.

Inspections are another issue about which I would have concerns. I would encourage members to follow this up with the Minister. We have called on the State to develop a robust independent inspection mechanism to ensure that the new national standards for accommodation offered are fully implemented, including in emergency accommodation centres. To our knowledge, this has not yet begun so that is something we need to see followed up.

We spoke about the backlog. I also recall some of the testimony the committee received from Nick Henderson in July who provided figures of approximately 5,000 people awaiting a first instance decision. The medium length of stay in direct provision is 27 months and there are approximately 1,800 unrelated people who are sharing bedrooms at the moment. Those are the concerns we have around delays. I cannot answer as to why they are happening. I think it is really a question for the Minister. I appreciate that Covid has presented significant and unique challenges for everybody to deal with, including the Minister, in the advancement of the White Paper but nonetheless these are commitments made and must be delivered upon.

To answer the question about the suite of supports we want to see in place, behind that is a mindset change. It is about really moving towards informing our international protection system with a mindset that we are lucky to welcome many of the aspirant citizens who want to come to this country. We need to invite them and offer them integration from day one. We need to see and value the contribution they can make to our society. When we do that, we will start to see a system that is informed by trauma, understands the trauma people have been through and provides wraparound supports that are tailored to their needs and any trauma they may have suffered before they arrived on our shores. Those fundamental principles we outlined in our submission are what we want to see. We want to see families arriving from the Afghan situation mentioned being provided with appropriate accommodation that allows them as families to continue to live and support each other and access society in a way that is appropriate - schools, work and so on. Employment is critical among those. That is what we are looking for in terms of the suite of supports. I will hand over to Professor Kathleen Lynch who will address some of the other questions.