Pat Casey (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The issue I want to raise relates to the communications strategy of the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, specifically regarding sites that have been identified as potential locations for the housing of people seeking international protection. Every one of us in this Chamber has been affected by its communications at this stage. The current policy on which the Department has agreed, namely, keeping everybody, including council officials and indeed gardaí, completely in the dark, is becoming unacceptable. The lack of information is leading to speculation, and that speculation is completely off the radar.

There is another problem. In raising it, I refer to a specific case in Wicklow. Last Friday week, I got a phone call at 5.30 p.m. or 6 p.m. from someone stating a site in Newtownmountkennedy had been identified as a potential location for people seeking international protection and that it was being assessed as a potential site.On Monday, we got written confirmation that the site was being assessed. Over the weekend, crews and machinery moved onto the site and by Tuesday, the topsoil was being taken off an acre of ground. On Wednesday, membrane was put down and on Thursday, hard core was put down. This has nothing to do with assessing a site. This is the preparation of a site for something. The road had to be closed so that a second access road into the site could be created.

The people of Newtownmountkennedy are frustrated and annoyed. From my point of view, we were told by the Department that the site was being assessed. In the public interest, we passed that information on to the community but that information was misleading, at best. The Department was not being truthful or honest with us, as public representatives, with the local communities, the local authorities and An Garda Síochána.

Whether we have the communication at the start or the end of the process, interaction with the community has to happen at some point. I believe it should happen at the start of the process because we are losing properties because of misinformation. A meeting was held yesterday morning, assisted by the Department, to which only one Oireachtas Member was invited, along with some members of the local community. No other Oireachtas Member was informed of that meeting. That cannot be allowed to happen. If we are to bring any credibility back to this process, we must put early and truthful communication with the people at the heart of it. We must tell the people exactly what is happening in their communities. Let us not hide behind spin and false, misleading information, which is what public representatives are receiving. We are putting that information into the public domain and then people have no respect for us because we are misleading them. The Department has to address this immediately.