Fiach MacConghail (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I acknowledge in the Seanad the passing of one of Ireland's most under-rated writers, the extraordinary Dermot Healy whom I knew. We met at funerals, wakes and festivals. There is a terrible sadness when a poet and an artist leaves us without a celebration and acknowledgment. Eileen Battersby could not have put it better in The Irish Timestoday when she wrote that Dermot Healy "began as a fully formed writer". One of the great Irish novels of the 20th century was A Goat's Songwhich will stand the test of time. Of course, his memoir, The Bend for Home, is his apotheosis. I am sorry for his loss and extend the condolences of the House to his family, his wife and the members of the artistic community who are mourning his loss. The writer, Michael Harding, wrote about him:

He told me once that prose is poetry in the sense that a bird is still a bird when it sits still. And the last image he flung at me, with the glee of a Zen master, his eyes hugging me, his wisdom falling like rose petals from a teacher's hands was this: "If you want to break a dog's heart", he whispered, "throw a stone into the sea."

I ask for a debate with the Minister for Justice and Equality on the direct provision system. Last October the Independent group of Senators proposed a motion calling for an examination to establish whether the system of direct provision was detrimental to the welfare and development of children and whether an appropriate alternative form of support and accommodation could be provided which would be more suitable for families, particularly children. Last week I heard an extraordinary report on Sean O'Rourke's programme by the journalist Brian O'Connell who had spoken to a young asylum seeker who had spent all her life in direct provision accommodation. She was seven years of age. We are rightly concerned about, need a system of restorative justice and answers to many institutional incidents in our recent past, not least mother and baby homes. However, we do not need to be quoted in 20 years time as Senators who had raised the issue of a dehumanising process and how we had raised children under State control in 2014 and did not achieve anything. In this context, I welcome the announcement by the Minister for Justice and Equality yesterday that she would move swiftly to create a single asylum applications procedure so as to speed up the process and shorten the time people spent in the direct provision system. It is also bizarre, technocratic and Orwellian that the Ombudsman for Children is excluded from investigating such cases, while the Government's special rapporteur on child protection, Dr. Geoffrey Shannon, has said "the specific vulnerability of children accommodated in the system of direct provision has the potential to create harm by the particular circumstances of their residence, including the inability of parents to properly care for and protect their children and damage that may be done by living for a lengthy period of time in an institutional setting." When will the House make an impact to improve the lives of these young children?