Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Senators for their contributions. At a time when cynicism about politics is at is height it is a great credit to this House that this issue has been raised here consistently. There is a level of understanding and agreement across the House on the importance of this issue. I feel keenly that as public representatives we have a responsibility to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves, have no political power, cannot access mainstream media and are often, as in this case, on the edge of society. If such people do not have advocates in this House then they will not get them anywhere else. It is vital that both Houses of the Oireachtas debate the matter. It is a credit to this House that the issue of direct provision has been raised repeatedly. I am quite happy to return here and give updates on where we are.

One expects statements from the Government or a Department to have a mix of legalistic language and deal with the issues of High Court cases and legislation. Every Senator here who has contributed to this debate will agree with me that we must get back to the human stories behind direct provision. I have visited direct provision centres up and down this land over the past number of months and since I was given the opportunity to serve as a junior Minister. I have visited centres in Waterford, Limerick, Sligo, Laois, the Balseskin Reception Centre in Dublin and Galway. Hand on heart, as an asylum seeker, I could see myself spending a period of weeks or months in some centres but there were some in which I would not like to spend a night.

I met a man in a direct provision centre in Limerick who is quite literally broken. It is very difficult not to be affected by meeting someone like that. He is completely broken. He had come from difficult and vulnerable circumstances when he arrived here. As a society, system and country we have compounded his misery and broken him and I do not know if he will ever be repaired. I feel keenly that we have a responsibility to him, and also to children, who have been broken by the situation in which they find themselves. On my visits I noticed children playing a game called kitchen in the play spaces provided in direct provision centres. When they were playing they looked for an orange dispenser in the toy because that is the only way they know to get orange juice. It has never been given to them by their mother and they do not know about food preparation. Therefore, it is very disconcerting for me to see that this country still persists in prolonging its love affair with incarceration. Apparently in the 1950s we had 250,000 people in mental institutions. Ireland also has a history of mother and baby homes, Magdalen laundries and an industrial schools system, yet again we revert to incarcerating and storing people while they wait for their asylum applications to be processed.

The current system was first brought in as a reaction to about 10,000 people a year coming into the country and wanting to ensure nobody was ever made homeless, as Senator Bacik has said. The system has proven successful because no asylum seeker who has gone through this process has ever been made homeless. The number of asylum seekers today is much reduced. I reject the idea of a pull factor and collectively we have to reject the idea of a pull factor.