Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Through engagement when somebody is given a decision much more quickly, we are much more likely to know whether the person is leaving and they will communicate this to us. We can check that. In years gone by, because it took so long to go through these processors, people disappeared out of the system. What we do, and have been doing, is carry out checks to look at whether people are still living where they said they are living. We look to see whether they are in receipt of social protection payments or in housing. We look to see whether any of these elements are being taken up. Where they are not, or where someone has had a deportation order against them, the likelihood is they have left.

When we apply a much quicker and more efficient processing system, it is much easier to know where people are when they have been given a negative decision, to assist them to leave them and to do so in a quicker way. It will create a much clearer picture of who is here and who is not, short of literally putting people into detention camps where they are imprisoned. Very few other countries do that and it is not what the vast majority of us would propose to do to people who come into our country to seek asylum.