Mr. Nick Henderson:

As I said in our opening address, we have a real concern that the system has worsened. The primary manifestation is emergency centres. There are a little over 500 people in emergency centres. These are hotels or bed and breakfast accommodation that the State has procured or contracted to provide accommodation on an emergency basis. We have used the phrase "off-grid". We do not really know where those centres are located. Fundamentally, the people in those centres, hotels or bed and breakfast accommodation do not know where the external services that could help them are located.

There have also been issues with people not going through Balseskin reception centre. If that were to happen, the people affected should have received a medical card. People have not been getting medical cards. They have been located in areas where the general practitioner list may be full. A significant number of children are in emergency centres - 88 children. Like children in homeless bed and breakfast accommodation, they have struggled to get education. Indeed, I do not know if they get any education at all.

We are gravely concerned about that situation.

On wider improvements, as we understand it, there has been a narrowing of the gap between capacity and occupancy rates in the direct provision system in the last two years. There are fewer beds and centres are now simply overcrowded. That has meant that reforms envisaged by the Government arising from the McMahon process have had to be curtailed or limited to an extent.

On the third point, we refer the Deputy to Nasc, an NGO in Cork, from which the committee will be hearing in June. It has produced an important report which analyses the extent to which the recommendations have been implemented. The picture is less clear than what may have been suggested by the Government. The emergency centres are of real concern and we do not see this changing over the course of 2019 owing to the numbers within and existing capacity within the traditional direct provision estate being full.