Mr. Andreas Mokake:

In response to Senator Kelleher's question about a liaison person in the Department. We do not have direct quality assurance in SPIRASI and we depend on Coláiste Éanna in Cabra. Our teachers would do all the assessment and send them out to Cabra for external verification.

The Department is focused on the provision of English language and IT classes to our refugees and asylum seekers and survivors of torture. We work on a budget of €100,000 for management, tuition hours and overheads and we do not have the capability of having such quality assurance where we can do everything by ourselves. That is why we are lucky to have Coláiste Éanna and we depend on it.

The question of why these guys cannot just go into mainstream schools can always come up. Sometimes they finish level 5 and we say that there is a possibility for a progression route and they can move on to other colleges. They go to those colleges and they come back to us because it is a place where they feel comfortable. They feel it is not all about English. It is about the therapeutic intervention that is involved in supporting them. We have to depend on others. That is why in our new strategic plan for 2018 to 2020 we are trying to see a situation where we can spread our holistic approach around, not only in Dublin. There are asylum seekers, refugees and survivors of torture in other parts of Ireland who are in centres and all they do is eat, sleep and think. We need to do everything possible to empower them and make them part of the society.