Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman. As is evident from the White Paper we published at the end of February, our intention is to create a new system of support for international protection applicants that is fundamentally different from the current model. We need a system that meets the needs of applicants and enables them to contribute positively to Irish life.

I have visited many direct provision centres in my day. They vary quite a lot. Many have a hollow, disconnected and disjointed feel to them, a feeling of limbo. We have all heard and know of many individual cases over the years where people in vulnerable situations simply did not get the help they needed. The new system will be different as the profit motive will be replaced with an approach that will be centred on the primacy of nurturing the humanity and rights of people.

As Minister of State with responsibility for community development and charities, I am delighted there is a key role envisaged for the community and voluntary sector in how we as a State and a society will treat international protection applicants. Putting the humanity and rights of people at the core of our approach is best done by having the community and voluntary sector centrally involved, simply because it does this best.

Community integration is at the heart of the new model. Instead of living separately from communities, in large congregated settings, often in isolated locations, applicants will live in houses and apartments in towns and cities throughout the country. They will be encouraged to seek employment once they are eligible to do so and will be supported to become active members of their local communities. Integration from day one is a key principle of the new policy. The approach used by the Irish refugee protection programme to co-ordinate refugee integration under the leadership of local authorities will be our guide. Such an approach ensures service providers can plan for the arrival and needs of applicants and their families and can mobilise community and volunteer integration supports in meeting them. NGOs will be contracted to provide integration workers to support applicants.

The new policy emphasises the importance of community engagement and includes a commitment to provide funding to support specific community integration initiatives. The Department of Rural and Community Development and the Minister, Deputy O’Gorman’s Department will collaborate to ensure local programmes are aligned with broader community policy goals and delivered to a consistent standard of quality.

Children and young people’s services committees also have a key part to play in the delivery of the new policy. They will work to ensure there is a specific focus on the needs of children, young people and their families in international protection accommodation. This will also proactively support wider community engagement and child and youth participation. I have spent much of my life sitting down with people new to the country and explaining to them their rights and entitlements and helping them to navigate systems they have got lost in and been struggling with for months or often years. I am glad to say that at every stage of the international protection process, applicants will have a right to information describing the services and supports they can receive. Under the new model, comprehensive information will be proactively supplied to applicants at key stages and will be available at request at any stage via case workers, phone, email and online. All staff and officials working with international protection applicants will be required to foster a culture of openness, approachability and trust.

As many applicants for international protection require interpretation services to enable them to avail of services and supports and take their first steps in integrating into Irish society, the international protection support service will ensure all service users have access to high-quality interpretation services when they need them at each stage of the process.

The new model anticipates that NGOs will be centrally involved in the delivery of services to applicants and in promoting their integration into local communities. A new specific integration fund will be established to enable NGOs to develop integration projects and programmes on behalf of applicants. As mentioned by the Minister, Deputy O’Gorman, the Department of Justice introduced changes to the right of applicants to access the labour market. Now applicants are able to apply for access six months after they have registered their application, if they have not received a first instance decision in this time. Furthermore, applicants are now granted labour market access for a 12-month period, which can be renewed. This is double the length of previous permission grants.

Once labour market access has been granted, it is already the case that applicants can attend further education and training courses to help in upskilling. Since post-leaving certificate, PLC, courses are also often focused on directly developing skills for employment, it is now proposed the international student charge for PLC courses, currently €3,600, be waived for protection applicants who have established labour market access, a change that will facilitate wider access to these courses. The narrowness, the monotony, the feelings of wasted time and wasted life expressed by too many asylum seekers will be positively impacted by these measures.

Applicants for international protection whose applications are successful and who are eligible for social housing support will be assisted by local authorities with their move out of international protection accommodation and into mainstream accommodation within the community. This is an important feature of the existing process and will continue to be so in the new model.

Due to increased budget allocations I secured in budget 2021, by the end of this year, every county in Ireland will have its own fully fledged volunteer centre. With this national network, the new national volunteering policy and the ongoing growth and development of volunteer policy and support structures, volunteerism will play an increasing role in the integration of new communities in Ireland. This will happen because volunteerism offers positive environments for migrants to mix with Irish people and broaden their understanding of their lives, but it also offers new communities accessible, easy and supported introductory pathways into Irish society.

I oversee the social inclusion and community activation programme, SICAP. Pobal recently published a report on the impact of SICAP on migrant integration. Asylum seekers are a key target group under SICAP, so knowing the value of the tailored one-to-one approach of local development companies nationally, it was no surprise to me that local development companies implementing SICAP are doing valuable work with asylum seekers and so will also play a key role going forward with this new approach.

Integration and inclusion are the cornerstones of Ireland's new international protection support service, which will create better outcomes not only for international protection applicants, who come here seeking our assistance and compassion, but also for local communities, who will host them and welcome them into Irish society.

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