Mr. Brian Killoran:

I can, unless Sr. Keenan or Mr. Neenan would like to come in?

The issue of firewalls around information arises repeatedly in much of our work. It has arisen during the Covid-19 pandemic, where there has been much concern among undocumented people accessing the vaccine in regard to where their information would go. A good body of work was done in communicating the fact that is not an issue. No information is being shared by the health authorities with immigration officials, for example.

There is a further issue within the Garda and the Department of Justice whereby if somebody reports an incident of racism, there is a gentlemen’s agreement or a stated understanding from the Garda such that the information will not go any further. The Garda will support the person as an undocumented person to deal with the incident of racism the person is dealing with but the information will not be passed on, although that is not adequate. It is not true to say statements never permeate verbally across a force of thousands of gardaí throughout the country. While the Garda has very good intercultural and diversity strategies and is doing a lot of work internally about this, a much clearer description and articulation of firewalls, even within police services, is very important.

There are good international examples of this. When we talk about co-ordination across Departments, we always raise the example of Portugal. Portugal has a high commissioner for migration as a role underneath the Prime Minister's office, and it is his or her role to work across government departments to ensure everyone is on the same page with regard to what they should be doing about migration. We previously argued for a similar role within the Department of Taoiseach but it has never come about. The migrant integration strategy attempts to do that by bringing in other Departments, and sometimes it works and sometimes it does not, but that kind of co-ordination role across Departments needs to rest somewhere as a responsibility and needs to have teeth. It needs to be able to bring in Departments and ensure they are doing what they said they would do, that they have targets and that they are evaluated and reported on independently.

That kind of sharing of information is very important across Departments while, at the same time, ensuring the firewall is there to protect against, for example, somebody who is undocumented, and there will be those who remain undocumented even after the scheme next year if they have not qualified. They should not have anything to fear about their status being revealed to immigration. Very little is served by that happening, apart from the person staying away from a crucial service. By the very political decision, which was a good one, of introducing the regularisation scheme, as a country we are beginning to recognise the fact that undocumented migration happens. It is a fact in every country in the world, and the best way to deal with it is by getting people back into the system as quickly as possible.

We need to get our thinking around that, rooting out fraud and undocumented migration. Punishment should not be our approach anymore. We need to enfranchise people as quickly as possible in 99% of cases. That is much more important than trying to round up people and remove them from the State, which cannot happen in any event.