Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I too want to ask the Minister questions about the Skellig Star hotel in Cahersiveen. First, I wish to make some brief points about the direct provision system in this Covid-19 crisis in general. There are 7,700 residents in direct provision. As of last Friday - the latest information we have is five days old - 149 of those people had the disease, while there were ten clusters, ten people had been hospitalised, and only 1,600 had been tested. Some 1,700 asylum seekers were sharing rooms with non-family members. In one example in Meath, there were 23 men in seven rooms. The norm is to share washing, food and laundry space. There is talk of congregated settings. What can one do in a hospital or a nursing home? There are alternatives, however, in this situation. The caretaker Government could amend the housing assistance payment legislation to include asylum seekers. God knows there are enough vacant properties available now with the downturn in tourism and the slump in Airbnb bookings. Instead, the Government made a different choice and took a different road. Dr. Eamonn Faller, an infectious disease expert in Cork University Hospital, described it well when writing this week. He nailed it. He said that the Government "maintained the status quo in the knowledge that the current situation of outbreaks and public health endangerment was inevitable". In other words, the Minister and his Government chose to maintain the inhumane direct provision system, and put the maintenance of that system above the health, safety and even the lives of the residents who are forced to live within it. Fiona Finn, chief executive of the migrant group Nasc, nailed it as well when she commented on the material distributed to the Skellig Star hotel by the HSE public health office the other day. She said: "To suggest that the residents are in any way responsible for the continued spread of the virus of the centre is reprehensible and the worst form of victim blaming". I echo that sentiment.

I want to ask the Minister briefly about two issues. He and the Minister of State when replying to the Irish Refugee Council CEO yesterday denied that residents in that centre are being barred from leaving and stated that the door was effectively left on the latch.

The door is on the latch. It is also true that gates that were previously locked are now unlocked but is the Minister aware that there is a "Stop" sign on every door out of that centre along with the words "Do not leave - not an exit" and that people, including women, who attempt to go out the doors are told that if they do, action may be taken against them, which the residents interpret as a threat of an increased chance of deportation? I am asking the Minister to comment on that situation, which was reported to me by a resident of the place just before I came in here. Those residents are to be held to a far higher standard than the rest of the population when it comes to quarantine conditions.

As for the cleaning regime in the hotel, Deputy Bríd Smith said that up until very recently, there was one cleaner for 15 rooms. The correspondence from the Minister yesterday talked of vacuuming, cleaning, detergent sprays and bleach yet why is it that in a hotel where 25 people have had this disease, there is no deep-clean disinfecting of that building up to the highest possible medical standard? Is it because that would involve closing the place? Why does the Minister not do that or make sure that is done?

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