Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputies for their contributions. As I said previously, this is one of the issues that goes beyond politics in this House. I have been impressed by the level of interest that Deputies and Senators from different parties have taken in this discussion on this area of direct provision. However, references to welfare fraud do not help when we are discussing the issue of direct provision in this country. We have had a love affair with incarcerating people. We did it in mental institutions in the 1950s. We did it in the Magdalen laundries and industrial schools, and we continue to do it with the direct provision system. I know Department officials do not like those comparisons, and they know that when the original decision was made to establish direct provision centres - there were 60 initially and now there are only 34 - it was in response to a particular situation. The amount of time that it was envisaged somebody would stay in a direct provision centre was six months and now people have been living there for more than ten years, and there are children who know nothing else but a direct provision centre. That has belittled them and stripped them of their dignity.

I am very taken by the human stories that, individually and collectively, we have come across in direct provision centres. One man in Limerick has been completely broken by what we have done to him. Obviously, his circumstances in the country where he came from resulted in him being very vulnerable but we have compounded that and broken him. I feel a great sense of duty to that individual, and to the other 4,500 people who are living in the system, one third of whom are children and one third of whom have been living there for over five years. I would stay in some of the centres but I would not spend a night in some of the others. I recall seeing in one centre a corridor of eight sleeping units separated by curtains. I would not stay in it, and I would not expect anybody else to stay in it either.

While every other country in Europe seems to be strangled with the conversation around immigration and xenophobia, this House and this country can be proud of the fact that we have not allowed the issue of asylum, immigration or integration strangle our political debate, and it does not come to the forefront of election discussions. However, I am awaiting the publication of the report. Decent, honourable people who are as critical of the direct provision system as anybody could sit on that working group. The reason for its establishment was to assemble the people who know the system best as well as officials who are overseeing the system and officials from different Departments who need to be discussing issues with them such as education, the environment and social protection, and allow them come to conclusions. On one particular issue I am led to believe that 15 individual meetings took place. That is why, when I was expecting originally that we could assemble the group in September and have a report by Christmas, it has proved almost impossible to do it in that timeframe. While I was hoping to get the report last month, it now appears it will be ready this month but if we want to do something, we have to do it well.

It would be my intention, and I am sure the intention of the Minister, Deputy Fitzgerald, on receipt of the report to bring it to Government first, publish it and then implement it because all the hard work has been done. All the convincing of officials has been done and as Deputy Murphy rightly said, it is now the responsibility of Government to implement it during this term.

In this post-referendum era when we are all talking about equality, there are other groups in society who want to know what this new feeling of equality will give to them. They are members of the Traveller community, people who live in socially and economically deprived areas, young people, old people, new people to our country, and certainly people living in direct provision centres.

While my individual responses to the report may have left some Deputies less than inspired, and I appreciate Deputy Mac Lochlainn's endeavours in this regard which reflect very well on his chairmanship of the committee and the members also as this is an issue they have taken on and feel so strongly about, when the report is published and people see what it contains we can finally turn the page on what has been a shameful period in Irish history that we cannot defend. On the day I became Minister of State with responsibility for new communities in the Department of Justice and Equality I said this was not a system I could stand over. It is a system that belittles and dehumanises people. We cannot stand over a system where people are languishing for years, with a sense of having no future.

A number of things have to happen. What kind of system could I oversee? What kind of system could we stand over? It was initially envisaged that direct provision would be a system to tackle the homelessness crisis. I can envisage a system where there is an excellently run centre, with proper oversight, links to the community and proper cooking facilities for families. It can be suggested by people who do not understand the importance of proper cooking facilities that they are unimportant but they are very important to a mother and father who need to prepare food for their children. We need proper family orientated dwellings. We must do away with the idea, which I have seen in some centres, of a wardrobe in a single room separating the children's and the parents' sleeping conditions. That is outrageous. We must do away with that and have proper family living facilities but we must only ever envisage that somebody would be there for a matter of weeks or months, and certainly not more than six months and certainly not for a period of years. The asylum system should treat these people with respect and dignity and we should not have a situation where people are languishing in it for years.

It is the responsibility of Deputies in this House to make contributions to this debate, not to respond to uninformed, ill-judged, unresearched comments from constituents. They should base all their comments regarding the asylum system or integration issues on facts. That is very important when we are dealing with people who are vulnerable.

We have a fantastic opportunity now, in this post-referendum era and as we face into the commemoration of the 1916 Rising, to reassess our values as a Republic, and this is one of the areas which has been a stain on our reputation over the past number of years.

When the report comes to Government, and I have been told it will be this month, although I was expecting it next week - there may be a slight delay on that - the responsibility then is not just to publish but to implement. If people such as representatives from the UNHCR, SPIRASI, the Children's Rights Alliance and the Jesuit refugee group, as well as representatives from academia and people with a history in the trade union movement, have taken the time, under the stewardship of Bryan McMahon, to come up with a report over this number of months, and they see it is workable, it is then the responsibility of Government to act and to ensure it is implemented in a timely fashion.

Regardless of how humane our system of direct provision is here, nobody wants to live in these centres. They want to live a full and productive life, and we must be conscious of that. Currently within the system there are 500 people who have leave to remain and do not need to be in direct provision, but we have an issue in terms of housing. We have 500 individuals who have been granted permission to start a life in Ireland but they do not have the facilities to do so because of a housing issue and other supports they believe are necessary to transition. That transitional period will be key to how we facilitate people to move out of direct provision and remain connected with the community in which they have been living for some time and where their children may be in school. Helping them to integrate into that community and society and having supports available for them so that they can make that transition will be key as well.

Regarding issues to do with education, young people in primary and secondary education can, as the Minister, Deputy Jan O'Sullivan, has already indicated, move on to third level.

I do not accept the argument that asylum seekers should not be afforded the right to work. My personal opinion is that we are standing outside the European norm when it comes to facilitating asylum seekers with the right to work. That will remain an issue of contention and debate but the manner in which we have conducted this debate is a credit to this House, the political parties who serve in it, the Seanad and the committees which have raised this as an issue that we should pursue and correct.

Rather than taking credit in this House for the way the debate has been conducted, the greatest credit we will get is for implementing the report that will be given to the Government in the next few days. We can then finally put to bed the scandal of direct provision. Hopefully, those within the system can see a brighter future and we can have a system of which we can be rightly proud in a country that calls itself a republic.

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