Aideen Hayden (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the authors of this motion, which has received cross-party support. I have spoken on it on a number of occasions. We all take different perspectives and have different expertise to bring to bear on this. Senator van Turnhout has emphasised child protection in the direct provision system. I echo some of Senator Ó Clochartaigh's words on the right to a home. I have an entire speech that can go back over all the statistics on the number of people in direct provision, the amount of State money spent on it, how utterly ineffective the system is, how many years people are spending in it, the number of people who have committed suicide in direct provision and the number of allegations of child abuse in direct provision. A society that claims to value the individual and family, protect children and advocate the idea that we all have a right to a home cannot stand over our direct provision system.

I agree with Senator Ó Clochartaigh. The fact of the matter is families live in one room. The normal type of family scenario is to have space to have family time with children, to cook for the family and to provide for it, and, as was rightly pointed out, space to have a relationship between two partners and between those partners and their children. The bottom line is this does not exist in direct provision and this is a scar on the face of this country. We are all very much agreed across the board this must be a priority for the Government. I do not want to sit down in this Chamber in two years' time and have the same debate again. We cannot hold our heads up as a country if the situation continues. We cannot talk about what we have done for the survivors of the Magdalen laundries and in a number of other instances if we do not tackle direct provision.

I want to approach this from a practical perspective. We need to make a statement here today we will deal with it on a gradual and integrated basis. To start with the State could guarantee to those who have been in direct provision the longest a home in which they can live, have a proper family life and lead a dignified existence in this country, which is the reason they are here in the first place. I would like to see an initial commitment that anybody who has been in direct provision for longer than a period of three years will have their housing situation met within six months. I would then like us to commit to dealing with the housing situation of anybody who has been in the system for between a year and a half and three years within a further period of six months. Therefore, within a year anybody who has been in direct provision for a period longer than a year and a half will have been housed appropriately. This does not mean I am willing to stand over direct provision as it exists. I am not. Direct provision is no different from the type of hostel system provided for homeless people which is also hopelessly inadequate. It is part of a wider picture and does not just apply to people in direct provision. It also applies to those living in long-term homeless accommodation, but this is an issue for another day.

We must work towards a situation where nobody is in direct provision and nobody is inappropriately housed. No family should live in direct provision in one room. There should be appropriate family housing, appropriate means to cook a meal, appropriate means to spend time with one's children and appropriate means for children to have study and recreational facilities. This must be our bottom baseline and it behoves us as a society to fight to protect this. All of the long-term inhabitants of direct provision should be housed in the community as a matter of urgency and we need a time commitment for this to happen. Within direct provision nobody and no family should live in inappropriate accommodation.

We can speak indefinitely about the situation. I ask the Minister to state today we are prepared to end this and that we will do so. We have all read the reports on the circumstances in which some of these families live, and they are quite astonishing. It is unbelievable and we should not stand over it. To really progress we need timescales and a direct commitment to end this and move the people in such accommodation into the community. There are wider issues which I am sure Senator Bacik dealt with. People's applications for asylum must be turned round within a decent period of time. It is not the fault of somebody living in direct provision for eight years they are living there. We need to move on from this. I congratulate the Senators for bringing forward the motion and it is something with which we can all agree.