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

I can speak on amendments Nos. 10, 36, 39, 49 and 215. I will first make some general comments about some of the contributions that have been made. I have to concur with much of what Senator Bacik has said. This legislation is trying to clean up an area of public policy that has robustly failed over quite a prolonged period. We have had a Bill kicking around the place for 12 to 15 years. Finally, we have taken the protection piece out of that legislation in order to ensure that new applicants have a more transparent and quicker protection process. The biggest problem with our system has been identified.

Senator Ó Clochartaigh seems to be confusing this Bill with a direct provision Bill. This is not a direct provision Bill. Last week he wanted to abolish direct provision, with no sense of how he was going to house thousands of asylum seekers. He would just leave them go homeless and put them on the housing lists, I suppose, with no provision whatsoever for them. Now he is trying to conflate the two issues again. I stand over absolutely everything I said that the Senator has just quoted back to me, and more.

This protection Bill is an effort to ensure that we do not have people languishing in direct provision for years on end, or children growing up in it. That is the whole point of the exercise. I will attest to the recommendations of the working group on the protection system, which reported not just on direct provision but on the whole system. That was the whole point of the working group. I hate to remind Senators, but about 4,000 people who are seeking asylum here are not in direct provision.

"The early enactment and implementation of a single procedure by way of the International Protection Bill as a matter of urgency," is one recommendation in the report. Another is: "As an additional safeguard, an annual review of the system with a view to making recommendations to guard against any future backlogs...". Both recommendations are covered in the general aims of the Bill. The report also states: "The review should also look at the option of reducing the five year mark in future years as appropriate." That is in the general aims of the Bill. It also states: "Where the State does not opt-in to an instrument for discrete reasons [...], the State should give full effect to the remaining provisions in order to safeguard important common standards and to promote consistency in the application of protection procedures and standards across the EU." Again, that is in the Bill. "The International Protection Bill 2015 should reflect the general principle contained in the Convention on the Rights of the Child"; that is outlined here as well. "The International Protection Bill should clearly provide that all children have the right to lodge an application for international protection"; that is provided for in sections 14, 15, 34, 35 and 57. "In relation to separated children, work should be undertaken to clarify the position with regard to access to the protection process in practice and age assessment procedures"; that is provided for in sections 14, 24 and 57. I can go on if the Senators wish me to do so. "The International Protection Bill 2015 should be further scrutinised to ensure the rights of the child to be heard are given sufficient expression and protection." That is provided for in sections 14, 15, 24, 34, 35 and 57. These are all recommendations from the working group report which are dealt with in the Bill. Remarkably, some NGOs and others have contacted me to say that the working group report is on a shelf somewhere and is not being implemented. It is the only game and the only document in town. There is no other document or piece of paper from which anybody in the Department, including myself and the Minister, Deputy Fitzgerald, is working. That is the document we are using to drive though reforms in this area.

"The International Protection Bill 2015 should contain a provision requiring decision-makers who take decisions in relation to children and those who interview them to have received and continue to receive appropriate procedural and substantive training." That is provided for in sections 34 and 35. More of the recommendations are included in sections 15, 34, 35, 47, 57, 61, 62, 64, 72 and so on. Twenty-six of the recommendations are provided for. I might also say that some of these recommendations will make other recommendations null and void.This is because if one gets people out of the system within six months, the entire idea of having access to the labour market after nine months will no longer be relevant, because everyone will have gone through the system by then. The entire point of what the Government is trying to achieve with this legislation is to ensure the avoidance of the inhumane reality of people living in centres for years on end. That is the entire point of this protection Bill because, as Members will be aware, the numbers are increasing. That is a fact, not a value judgment. While it used to be the case that Ireland dealt with numbers in the hundreds, it now is dealing with numbers in the thousands. This is simply what is being dealt with and is the way it is. This year, the number should be something greater than 3,500. That is not a value judgment; it is simply a statement of fact. The Government is trying to clean up the system under which there are 34 asylum centres nationwide, and has acknowledged that Ireland must opt into a system from which we previously had an opt-out clause. We must opt in and accept 4,000 refugees into Ireland because that is the humane thing to do, and meanwhile, an increasing number of people are coming here to claim asylum. This Bill will enable the Government to deal with that situation in a much more humane and compassionate fashion than has been the case in the past. I ask the Senator to not confuse the two issues - that is, direct provision and the protection Bill. I am talking about what the Government is trying to do. The assumption here is that somehow, within this legislation, the Government can deal with direct provision. The entire point of this legislation is that people can be assessed quickly, humanely and transparently within a short time in order that they are not obliged to spend endless years in direct provision. I might also note that it does not matter what conditions are available in direct provision - I absolutely agree they must be robustly changed and improved in many of the centres - because people do not wish to live in them; they want to get a decision on their application. This is what they seek.

The last point I will make, because the suggestion was that the Government is somehow keeping from people these recommendations and their effect on the Bill, is that officials from the Department worked on that document over the weekend to ensure it was available for Senators today. The documents were sitting in a pile outside the Chamber when I came in, which some Senators obviously did not notice on their way into the Chamber.