Mr. Peter Tyndall:

I will turn to Mr. Garvey for some more fine-grained information.

The complaints have changed over time. As to the top element of complaints, early on, there were an awful lot of complaints about food, for instance, the unsuitability and inappropriate nature of the food being provided. As we saw the move towards more self-cooking facilities, that has probably diminished as a major complaint.

Consistent throughout is the issue of transfer, for a whole variety of reasons. This has become particularly acute during the pandemic, and Mr. Garvey will talk to that shortly. People want to transfer to be near particular medical facilities or to be near particular family members who may already be in the State. For example, we have just been dealing with a complaint where a couple want to be transferred so they can be in the same centre. Transfer is a particular issue.

We also get complaints, as the Deputy mentioned, about access to other Government services, and healthcare was one where we were very actively engaged with the HSE. For example, some of the centres were in areas where there is simply no availability on the lists of GP practices, so we have had to work quite hard to make sure people were not being denied access to appropriate healthcare.

I should have said that transfers also relate to education issues, where people have access to a course and want to be near it. That is the transfer issue.

The Deputy mentioned some very particular issues but those two would be the issues I would see as being particularly significant in terms of numbers. Mr. Garvey can add to that. The issues around things like driver licences are ones we have been raising and have raised at ministerial level, and we are seeing movement on all of those long-standing ones. Some of them are very difficult to resolve because of the legislative requirement for a fixed address. Bank accounts definitely fall into that category, as does access to medical cards. Sometimes legislation has had to be amended. We are looking at changes to the current road traffic legislation to enable people to drive because, from an employment point of view, that is particularly important.

We found that a couple of the measures reduced complaints dramatically. I spoke about cooking and the other, of course, was the right to work. With people being able to work and being able to prepare their own meals, we noticed a change in morale in the centres in that it did not feel so bleak for people under those circumstances. We are continuing to work on this. Bank accounts are problematic. The State properly has anti-money laundering legislation and that makes it very difficult to open a bank account for many people, and it becomes impossible if people do not have a fixed address because they are in the direct provision system. Explorations are under way to find a way around that and I am optimistic they are coming to a satisfactory conclusion.

I want to go back to something the Chairman said because I should have picked it up earlier. We were very aware of the concerns of the Ombudsman for Children and his report was very powerful. We would also have had complaints from the other end, with families complaining about lack of access to facilities and, where we can, we have helped out with that. We work very closely with the Ombudsman for Children and where a complaint is more appropriate for one or the other of us, we transfer it promptly. When my staff are in the centres and they get a complaint about a children's issue, they will help that person and make sure that complaint reaches the Ombudsman for Children so it is not lost.

Mr. Garvey might want to come in on the volume of complaints and what the most common ones are.