Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister's speech and his leadership. Hopefully this will be a transformative day where this matter is concerned.

Direct provision coincides with my involvement in politics; I went for election in 1999 and direct provision was introduced in 2000. After 21 years we are finally grown up, in theory in any event. I hope the Minister actually makes this happen, with our support. We will be pushing him every step of the way. Looking at the Minister's leadership, I must say I welcome it, though I must put it in perspective due to the 21 years. During that time we had the Mahon report, finally, in 2015. We had the spending review in 2019, the interdepartmental group on direct provision in 2019, the justice committee report, the Dr. Catherine Day report and the Minister's own White Paper. This is in addition to the NGOs on the ground who worked solidly, the residents seeking asylum themselves who at every opportunity told us what was going on and the Ombudsman's reports which have added to the debate. The Minister's leadership comes on top of that and a system none of us could stand over. It was a system designed to commodify, dehumanise, isolate, to make a division between them and us, but most of all to ensure profits for the big boys. I am sure some women were in there too. Indeed, I remember saying in 2000, as an innocent councillor, that we should welcome asylum seekers to our city. An experienced councillor, who happened to be in Fianna Fáil - though it could have been any politician - told me "some things are best left alone". That typifies the attitude we have endured for 21 years and, worse than that, we have deliberately allowed violation of human rights legislation.

If this is a change, and it certainly is a change in theory, I welcome it and I will be working with the Minister on it. However, there are many things that could be done in the meantime. An amnesty has been mentioned by Deputy McGuinness, and we should look at that as well as other practical matters such as the right to work. There is an inconsistency between the Day report and the White Paper and there are many other inconsistencies but I would like to focus on the positive.

It is time to engage with the communities. As the Minister knows, I come from a county where we had the meeting in Oughterard. Notwithstanding how bad and difficult that was, the message I got from the people was that they would welcome asylum seekers to their town if it were done properly. I remember Deputy Stanton, the former Minister of State at the Department of Justice and Equality with responsibility for equality, immigration and integration, talked about a pilot project for communities and facilitating communities to help them. I wonder if the Minister could come back to that in his closing speech.

I mention vulnerability assessments. They are not part of a pilot project and they should not be. There is an obligation on us to carry out vulnerability assessments. The Minister might clarify that.

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