Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 5 October 2016
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality
UN Summit on Refugees and Migrants: Discussion
9:00 am
Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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Okay. We have ongoing meetings at which we review progress with the stakeholders involved in the McMahon report. The up-to-date position is that 91 of the recommendations have been implemented and 47 of them are in progress. We are conducting update on the audit now. I want to correct the Senator on one point. There was no question of an automatic entitlement to stay here. Obviously, every case had to be assessed. We are talking about the implementation of one of the main recommendations of the report, which related to people who were here for over five years. The Senator is right when she says that assessments have now been made in the vast majority of cases of people who were in direct provision for over five years.
It would be difficult to find anyone currently in direct provision who has been there for more than five years. I want to put that on the record. That is the reality. The people who are still there are those who are involved in judicial review applications. If they are not involved in a judicial review, they will be assessed and are eligible. Hundreds of decisions have been made and the vast majority of them have been given leave to remain.