Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Since when? It was not full when I was there last summer season. It was not full; there was no one in it. Maybe the Minister of State would want to check the facts. It is very close to me, and I will be taking a walk along the strand and I will see and come back to him. I will accept if I am wrong. It was always full with people - holiday-makers and locals - but there was nobody in it when I was around there last July and August. The gates were locked and the doors closed. The concerns were brought to me by the local people who were deeply frustrated by the lack of engagement with them before the decision was made. That was the RIA again. It is like the NRA. It is all-powerful and listens to no one. As I said, we disbanded the IRA but we got a lot of agencies afterwards that we need peace processes or some sort of talks to get rid of them. We have quango after quango which are not accountable to anyone, either the Oireachtas, the Minister or anyone else other than themselves, and they get fine hefty cheques and fine hefty retirement packages.

As part of the reply I received, I was told that in such cases, potential centres are assessed from a number of perspectives, including access to local amenities, the provision of State services and suitability of the accommodation for its particular purposes. To return to Clonea, the Minister of State probably knows it. He is only up the road on the same coastline. With all those people we saw out on the sea, and I salute the Naval Service, the ships that were out there and the rescues they made, I would have thought the last place those people would want to rest would be beside the sea with the fright and the terror they encountered crossing it. Remember Clonea village has no shops, no recreation and no infrastructure, so someone was codding someone there. I would have thought that it would be the last place, just from a human perspective. I am not saying that I am knowledgeable in this area but after such a terrorising trip across the sea, with some being rescued but so many drowned, I would have thought it would be the last place they would want to be sleeping or resting, that they would want to be in a place where they could not even hear the sea, and that they would want to be on terra firma, isteach san tír, inland. Someone would want to put on their thinking cap and see what is going on there.

There is not one single mention of local engagement. I know this was for a refugee centre which is not strictly the same as the asylum centres but I want to note how important it is that we bring a community with us when we are attempting to progress this matter in a manner that is fair to all concerned. I know the Minister of State engaged with people in Roscommon who are now on board, but again they had not been engaged with properly before. What is wrong with the system here that we cannot hold a public meeting, meet the different agencies, talk to the people and bring them with us? Ní neart go cur le chéile. Together we stand, divided we fall. We have all this Big Brother, this arm of the law. We have officials who are unelected and unaccountable to anyone, who make these decisions and frighten people, and then the image goes out of a local community that is anti-asylum seeker when nothing could be further from the truth. Consultation is very important. If we are building a hen house or a shed, we have to get planning permission and put a notice up on the ditch, but these officials can do anything they want to do. They ride in roughshod like John Wayne into Cong in that film he made in the west with Maureen O'Hara. This is reckless. This is 2016 and 2017 we are talking about, when we are supposed to be a modern, pluralist State with all the good things and the bad banished.

We will be here, or somebody else will be here, in 20 years having more inquiries into why people were incarcerated for 17 years. Deputy Connolly asked the Minister of State to give a date on putting some deadline on how long people should be kept for. Five years was envisaged at the start and even that was too long. We must be responsible and we must act on a human basis and try to alleviate all the suffering.

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