Ms Oonagh Buckley:

The role of integrating migrants etc. is now under the auspices of the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth. As part of the Government restructuring, the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, took over those functions. I strongly agree that we need to do as much as possible to integrate newly arrived migrants. The Senator is correct. The numbers of people who come and apply for international protection in Ireland is a tiny fraction of the thousands of people who arrive every year, many to study and to work here. A very large proportion of the work done by immigration services is about managing visas etc. for those persons who want to come to Ireland.

The other issue that is probably worth thinking about is that people arrive with children. Their children are first and second-generation migrants. We need to make sure that the next generation is fully integrated into Irish society. The children of the first generation of migrants to Ireland are now reaching adulthood. It is really important that the necessary supports and activities are there for them.

We are very lucky in one respect, in that all children in this country attend school, regardless of whether they have the right papers. The children of undocumented migrants can go to school and there is no issue about that. There is a strong level of integration at classroom level, which certainly helps.

It can be very important for people to become citizens. Ireland has a very generous approach to citizenship. People can apply after they have been in the country for four years. There are relatively few restrictions on the persons we will give citizenship to, on the assumption that they pass the security clearance. For example, we do not require people to pass exams, language tests and so on. That is inclusionary in its own right because it would be difficult for certain groups, such as women, for example, to do the necessary classes and pass tests. It is a way of making sure that we give a stable structure around all sorts of people.

With regard to integrating people who are living in direct provision centres, the thrust of the White Paper is about moving from congregated settings based slightly to one side in a town or whatever to a more integrated space. When the Department of Justice was responsible for direct provision we were already starting to try to move to procure own door accommodation as best we could to try to improve standards. We very much struggled with that in the context of the pandemic. Senator Murphy mentioned some issues that we had in terms of trying to open various centres over the course of 2019. That has to be part of the process.

I do not want to cut across the work of my colleagues in the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, but we found that there was always trouble before a centre opened. However, once it opened communities were incredibly welcoming. There are were always friends of the centre and people worked very hard to make sure that people within centres, who are often quite traumatised and come from very traumatic situations, were given as much support as they could from the community. We hope that would continue.

A new system of community sponsorship has been established. A community comes together and provides a house. A family from Syria or, in recent times, Afghanistan, is, in effect, taken from a plane and brought directly into a community. That comes from a Canadian model and is very much the strongest way to integrate any individual family into a community.