Neasa Hourigan (Dublin Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the clauses in the Bill that make provision for unaccompanied minors or those seeking international protection. I would like to draw his attention to people who have been granted a legal right to enter the State as family members of refugees or under the international humanitarian admission programme. It is not practical for these people to further delay their travel to Ireland for a number of reasons. In some circumstances, the family is in danger until such time as they can leave the country.

NGOs, including Nasc, a taxpayer-funded NGO, expend significant efforts working with international NGOs to reunite refugee families in Ireland. If travel is delayed and documents expire, the process and effort would have to begin again. At the moment, the Department of Justice sets out a 12-month deadline by which a family member must enter the State or lose that right.

Many refugee families benefit from means-tested financial assistance towards the cost of flights from the Irish Red Cross administered travel assistance scheme. That programme will probably not be able to bear the additional costs of quarantine. I ask the Minister to either consider further the proposed section 38B in section 7 of the Bill to allow the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth to designate quarantine accommodation for newly arriving family members or commit to funding quarantine for people coming in under the programmes. The number of such persons would be in the dozens nationally. This will be small changes for the State but would have a significant benefit for the families involved.

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