Ms Anastasia Crickley:

I think there is very little left for me to say because the other contributors have said it very well and eloquently. I will briefly talk to three things, namely, leverage, leadership and levels. At the outset, I am glad to be reminded by Deputy Ward about what happened in Clondalkin a few years ago in a project with which I had some minimal involvement. As has been presented by a number of our friends at this stage, we need to be careful about feeding what we fight. That is part of my response at this stage as well. With regard to levels, we need this response to happen at all levels. The local face-to-face response and the regional response are needed, together with national responses. I did not want to bore the committee by reading out the entire script but we in Community Work Ireland are calling for a well-structured, immediate and co-ordinated stream of funding for community work and for a civil society approach, which has to supported by the Departments of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth and Rural and Community Development, to clearly name what we are talking about. It needs to reach the groups who are not being reached. It needs to be flexible but it needs to be co-ordinated.

We also need immediate support for recruitment or a secondment scheme for community workers and others to drive engagement and response schemes. These do not get driven by just talking about them. They are being driven by people who are already trying to engage in an awful lot of other work. That support needs to ensure there is no reduction in existing community support and needs to build on the existing willingness to be involved and should include the recruitment of two workers in each local authority area. There is existing willingness to be involved - in spite of the terrible circumstances they face, as Mr. Daly is aware - by some people who are themselves seeking refuge. We cannot be going on about involving people. We have to acknowledge that the people who are seeking refuge have a right to be involved in some of the decisions being made. That is my bit about levels.

Regarding leadership, we need clear political leadership and a shift in the language and culture of what a number of the Deputies are expressing, from all political parties and none. We need a shift in the language and to use a language that speaks to the sort of Ireland all of the contributors say we are trying to create. That needs to be clearly reflected, in particular right now and over the next month. In terms of leverage, we need parity of esteem and power-sharing with the people on the ground, with the community sector and with all of us who have been struggling with these things for years. By way of throwing my own bit in at the end, although I have said we should not feed what we fight, we need to avoid demonisation and racialisation of categories of migrants. It reminds me of nothing more than the notion of the deserving poor, which served our people very badly in the Great Hunger of the 1840s. That is a real issue and a real challenge. The language which Deputy Ward and his colleagues use is absolutely crucial in supporting and addressing that particular challenge and in making sure that the snapshots even on the television and on the news are not of people wondering how many people can be kept out of the country but giving another message entirely.