Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 11 May 2021

Committee on Public Petitions

Update on Direct Provision: The Ombudsman

Mr. Peter Tyndall:

I want to clarify that although the standards say there should be no more than three unrelated people sharing a room, it remains my strong view and, of course, the White Paper will eventually facilitate this, that unrelated people should not be sharing rooms anyway. We will use the standards as a means of looking at complaints. As Mr. Garvey said, when we get a complaint, we can seek wider reassurance. If it looks to us as if a complaint is representative of a systemic problem, we can pursue the wider problem and we do not have to confine ourselves to the individual complaint. Nonetheless, I think it will take the measures in the White Paper to move us away from people sharing rooms with people they are not related to.