On 28 March, 2000 the Government agreed with my recommendations for the establishment of a statutory agency, under the aegis of my Department, called the reception and integration agency. It replaces the directorate for asylum support services and incorporates the refugee agency. Pending the enactment of legislation the new agency operates on a non-statutory basis.
The decision to establish the reception and integration agency follows an earlier decision of the Government that the recommendations in the report of the interdepartmental working group on the integration of refugees in Ireland should form the framework for integration policy and be implemented. The establishment of a single organisational structure – within the overall framework of structures for asylum and immigration – for co-ordinating and implementing integration policy is one of the key recommendations of the working group. The reception and integration agency is the vehicle for implementing this recommendation and its establishment facilitates a cohesive, co-ordinated approach to both the reception of asylum seekers and the integration of refugees. The agency has responsibility for planning and co-ordinating the provision of services to both asylum seekers and refugees; co-ordinating and implementing integration policy for all refugees and persons who, though not refugees, are granted leave to remain; and responding to conflict crisis situations which result in relatively large numbers of refugees arriving in Ireland within a short period of time, for example, the Kosovar nationals who were invited here by the Government in 1999.
The agency like its predecessor – the Directorate for Asylum Support Services – will continue to function on a cross agency/departmental multi-disciplinary basis. In that regard, in addition to my own Department, staff assigned to it are drawn from the Departments of Health and Children, Social, Community and Family Affairs, Education and Science, Environment and Local Government, Dublin Corporation, the Eastern Regional Health Authority, the Defence Forces and the Red Cross.
I have also appointed an interim advisory board to the new agency. This board is chaired by Mr. Raymond Rooney and has 15 members made up of seven members of the wider community and one representative each of the Departments of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Foreign Affairs, Social, Community and Family Affairs, Health and Children, Environment and Local Government and Finance and the director of the reception and integration agency on an ex-officio basis.