John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)

I will take up from where the Minister of State left off. Community is important. The engagement of community with any project ensures its success or failure. From the beginning of this process dealing with those that were coming to our country for protection or arriving here without their documentation or arriving here illegally, the Department did not respond in the way that it should. We have to acknowledge that. We have to say to communities that we were wrong in what we were attempting to do. They refused to respond to public representatives who were trying to assist the community to understand what was happening and to understand the policy and that is why I welcome the Minister's opening remarks in how he set out and explained the difference between temporary protection, international protection and those who are coming here to work and stay and contribute to our economy. That needs to be said more often and we need to take the appropriate actions to support that.

As well as supporting our own local communities, the new arrivals to those communities need to be supported and we need to have a plan and a strategy for the future that will deliver results in quick time. When people come here on a visa and are working and they ask for their wife or family to come to join them where they are economically sound and can support them, I do not know why they have to wait for a year or two years for that to be processed. I do not understand it. I do not understand why applications to the Department of justice take so long in the context of reaching a decision where a person is either legal or is not legal and must leave the country. Until we get to that point where we have clear systems and we have a clear understanding with the electorate, the people whom we represent and the communities that we are trying to support, we will have ongoing serious problems.

When Irish people and people who are living here and not Irish see, believe or are led to believe that others get far better treatment than them, that causes huge division in the country. The work of social media has contributed in no small way to all of that misinformation and all of that wrong and it needs to be corrected by the Department. The Minister has the resources. He knows what needs to be done. I have listened careful to what the Minister and the Minister of State, Deputy Brophy, had to say and I encourage him to bring about the action that is necessary.

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