Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The health information and safety legislation is being drafted. I made the point yesterday that given that the Government is only in place for a short period, there will be discussions between each Department and each Minister with the Taoiseach in the coming week to discuss the priority legislation and that will then be shared and discussed in the House. The priorities from each of the Departments and the legislation we hope to get through in this Dáil term will be published. I am informed the legislation raised by the Deputy is being drafted at present.

On the mobility scheme, work is being done in the Department of Health on a new scheme and that will also require legislation. I can confirm there is no change in the Government policy in implementing the recommendations of the McMahon report. Many of the recommendations have already been implemented. There has been an acceleration in the pace of decision-making with respect to those who have been in direct provision for more than five years. The numbers have gone down substantially. A decision was taken by the previous Government to increase the money made available for children and for access to third level education. Those were some of the serious recommendations in the report. Work is ongoing on implementing the recommendations and I intend to soon again meet members of the working party to review progress. I held a number of meetings with them during the course of last year to discuss the implementation of the recommendations. The change the Deputy described between the draft programme and the programme is not significant. We remain committed to what we said at the time regarding the implementation of those recommendations.

On the residency Bill, the Deputy will recall that the protection legislation was passed by this House last year. It was decided to separate it from the larger immigration and residency Bill. Given of the scale of that Bill, it had not been implemented by successive Ministers down the years and we decided it was important to bring forward the protection legislation. That was brought separately to this House and passed but work is ongoing on the broader Bill.

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