Vol. 858 No. 1
96. Deputy Ruth Coppinger asked the Minister for Justice and Equality if she will report on the investigations that have taken place into conditions and the changes that will be made following protests at direct provision centres throughout the country. [43827/14]
I ask Deputy Fitzgerald as Minister for Justice and Equality if she will report on any investigations she or her Department have carried out into direct provision centres and the conditions in them, particularly in light of the fact that residents at a number of centres have had to engage in protests to highlight their plight. What action is the Minister taking on this scandal?
The Reception and Integration Agency, or RIA, of my Department is responsible for the accommodation of protection applicants in accordance with the Government policy of direct provision and dispersal. Direct provision provides for full board accommodation supports while a final decision is awaited by a person on his or her protection or related leave to remain application. Approximately, 4,300 persons are residing in 34 asylum accommodation centres under contract to RIA.
In August, September and October this year, a series of protests took place at a number of direct provision asylum accommodation centres in counties Cork, Clare, Westmeath, Waterford, Limerick and Laois. I acknowledge that. In each case, officials from RIA met with the protesting residents and with local management. We have analysed what precisely was being raised by individuals. In every case, the issues being protested about fell into two categories, each requiring a different response.
The first category relates to local issues in the centres, including food and transport. Centre action plans with deliverables and timeframes were agreed between residents and service providers. The Deputy can verify that if she wishes. We will continue to monitor the position to ensure these agreements are implemented.
The second category relates to national issues. The Deputy will agree that the main issue that arises time and again is the length of time people spend in direct provision. As I outlined to the House, we intend, in line with other European countries, to introduce a single procedure to provide for effective and timely management of asylum applications. This is not currently the case. I and my colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, have, for the first time, established a working group consisting of representatives of many of the non-governmental organisations working in this area and representatives of statutory providers and various Departments. The group's terms of reference are to examine how the experience of families and children in direct provision centres can be improved. We have requested that it report back by Easter 2015 with recommendations that will make a difference to the families and individuals living in direct provision. As I indicated, my ministerial colleague and I have initiated a reforming measure over which I am proud to stand.
While I welcome any measure that will ameliorate the misery and suffering of people living in direct provision centres, does the Minister not agree it is time to close down these hell holes in which adults must live on €19 per week and children on €9.60 per week? There is no way to improve the experience of the residents of direct provision centres. We must recognise that conditions in them are a scandal. The Minister of State, Deputy Ó Ríordáin, described the current position as intolerable and question after question is raised about the issue in the House, yet it is allowed to continue.
I agree that people should have access to decent food. The issue, however, is that they are being asked to live in humiliating and degrading conditions for long periods. Those who seek asylum should live in a normal environment while their applications are processed.
It is time to recognise that direct provision centres, the operation of which has been outsourced to private firms, are similar to the Magdalen laundries. Incidentally, some asylum seekers are living in former convents. This scandal should not continue.
I do not agree with the Deputy's analysis that improvements cannot be made. The working group, which includes representatives of non-governmental organisations that have contact with the women, men and children living in direct provision centres, will make recommendations. Unlike other countries, Ireland does not detain asylum seekers. I am not condoning detention but pointing out that it occurs. The reason direct provision accommodation was first provided was that there was a major homeless crisis in Dublin at the time, with 8,500 people in the capital unable to find accommodation.
The number of asylum applications increased by 44.7% in the period to the end of September compared with the same period last year and it is expected to reach 1,300 by the end of 2014. This increase, which reflects similar developments elsewhere in Europe, presents a significant challenge for Ireland and other countries in terms of providing accommodation. People who arrive here seeking refugee status have been always provided with accommodation. I accept, however, that our response could be improved. As I noted, the Minister of State, Deputy Ó Ríordáin, and I are determined to implement whatever changes are feasible. Accommodation and care are being provided to more than 4,500 people in direct provision centres.
The Deputy suggests there is an alternative to direct provision. Any alternative would involve substantial resources.
I must interrupt the Minister as many Deputies wish to ask questions.
The Minister stated that, unlike other countries, Ireland does not detain asylum seekers. How does one describe a system in which people are not allowed to work or to have visitors and must eat and be at home at set times other than as a form of detention?
The Minister has said people are provided with accommodation and care. What would she call the treatment of a pregnant asylum seeker over the summer? It was hardly a great example of the State's care when she sought an abortion at eight weeks and was prevented from accessing that which was allowed for other women in the State, should they choose to leave the country availing of their constitutional right to travel or have an abortion under the legislation over which the Minister stood. The Government did not safeguard the girl's health and does not safeguard the health of asylum seekers, as has been recognised by all of the groups involved. The list included complaints about the length of time spent waiting, the unnecessarily restrictive rules for things such as food and the fact that there was no independent complaints commission. My alternative would be to allow people to live in a normal environment while they await the granting of asylum, as happened in the 1980s and 1990s and at other times.
The Deputy is anticipating the outcome of the inquiry regarding the young women she mentioned. As she knows, an inquiry is under way and I am sure all of the facts and details of the case will come out. My Department is extremely sensitive to women who find themselves in that situation. There are procedures in place for how these requests are handled in my Department; requests are dealt with in a very humane and understanding way. As a report will be published on the case, I do not want to anticipate its findings.
The system of direct provision has meant that we have been able to fulfil our legal and moral obligations to meet the needs of persons arriving in the country seeking protection who cannot meet their basic needs. The needs of more than 51,000 people seeking asylum have been met since the system was introduced. I have no doubt that the working group which will report by Easter next year will make recommendations which will improve the experience of asylum seekers and which we can implement immediately. We are committed to improving the system in whatever way we can.
97. Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan asked the Minister for Justice and Equality if her attention has been drawn to the concerns of those women who were in An Grianán who, for various reasons, did not receive Residential Institutions Redress Board awards or very little, are denied support because An Grianán was not included in her Department's ex gratia scheme, yet it is acknowledged that these women did work in St. Mary's laundry; and if this will be addressed in the forthcoming mother and baby home investigation. [43781/14]
My question concerns those ladies who, for various reasons, did not receive redress under the RIRB scheme and who now, because An Grianán is not included in the 12 institutions under the restorative scheme, will not have receive redress under that scheme. Can they be included in the mother and baby home scheme?
We have discussed this issue before. My Department and the women working to provide the service have taken every care to ensure all of the women applying for compensation have been dealt with carefully and as well as possible. I want to make a number of points. The Government made its decision, based on the recommendations of Mr. Justice Quirke, to establish an ex gratia scheme for the benefit of those women who had been admitted to and had worked in the ten Magdalen laundries, St. Mary's Training Centre, Stanhope Street and House of Mercy Training School, Wexford. The scheme is limited to these 12 institutions and there is no intention to expand it to include further institutions. Significant progress has been made in implementation of the scheme. Decisions have been made on 86% of the 774 applications received and 482 applicants have received lump sum payments, at a cost of €17.5 million. Many individual cases have been dealt with. Some 95 cases were refused, as the people concerned had not been in a relevant institution. They include women who were in mother and baby homes, industrial schools and other institutions run by religious orders which had laundries attached to them.
As the Deputy knows, An Grianán is located in the High Park complex. It was recognised by the Department of Education and Skills as a specific and separate institution and it was the first to be listed in the Schedule to the Residential Institutions Redress Act 2002.
Every one of the women about whom the Deputy has spoken was entitled, in the nine-year period the scheme was open, to seek redress under it. Some of the women seeking redress under the Magdalen scheme may have received redress under the previous residential institutions redress scheme.
I have spoken to the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Deputy James Reilly, about including the women the Deputy has mentioned in the terms of reference for the mother and baby home inquiry, but there are a number of them who fall outside the various schemes. I hope my response has been helpful.
The considerable progress made, after many years of waiting by the ladies in question, is acknowledged. I have just been reading the comments of one of the ladies in question. When she was 15 years of age, she was put in St. Mary's, High Park where she worked in the laundry. After approximately a year and a half, the nuns built an extension and called the building An Grianán, but all of the girls who were in this so-called training centre worked in the laundry. There is a difference in the case of An Grianán which people accept was, in effect, a laundry. In a previous response to me, the Minister said the scheme was limited specifically to those women who had been both resident and worked in the 12 institutions listed. However, two other training centres are included, namely, the centre in Wexford and the one in Summerhill. Therefore, there are difficulties for this group of women. No matter what scheme is proposed, everybody will not fit neatly within it; there will always be some who will fall outside it. The women in question, some of whom who had good reasons for not applying to the Residential Institutions Redress Board, now find that they have no redress under the restorative scheme. It would be great if the Department would consider this group of women and whether there was something that could be done for them in order that they do not have to take the issue to the High Court or the Supreme Court.
I accept the point that there are women who fall outside a particular scheme. However, there was a nine-year period during which women could have applied for redress. I understand that, for various reasons, this might have been difficult for some of them. While it is a matter for the Minister for Education and Skills to consider late applicants to the scheme, under which the women referred to would most appropriately be dealt with, I recognise that it is closed. We have followed and are implementing Mr. Justice Quirke's recommendations closely for the women about whom the Deputy has spoken. Some seven of the applicants have, because they were in An Grianán, appealed the decisions made in their cases to refuse their applications to the Ombudsman, but the Ombudsman has upheld the decision made by my officials in six of these cases. The process of appeal can be used. In total, some 18 women have decided to appeal their cases to the Ombudsman and I await a decision in four of these cases. Under the scheme, an interview is available to women outside the particular scheme.
I wish to refer to one other aspect of this matter concerning women who have reached certain stages of the process but where there is insufficient evidence to deal with their cases. An interview process has been devised by the Minister but Justice for the Magdalenes and some of the women involves have concerns about the process. There is a need for greater clarity. For example, will departmental officials visit those women who are unable to travel? How will the Department deal with the women who lack capacity? If they did not use the €500 available to meet the cost of legal representation, can they use it now? What format will the interview process take? Will the testimony of survivors or that of the religious orders and their records have greater weight? There is also concern about having a separate decision maker. We need greater clarity.
I am very happy to make the interview process public and will send the Deputy details on it. The process is intended to help the women involved. We recognise that for many of them, recollecting or providing evidence on the precise length of stay is difficult. We are totally open to using other sources of information and have been doing so, such as school and social welfare work records, etc.
We have now initiated this interview process. The person being interviewed can bring somebody along, and the legal fee can be used in regard to that interview process. It is intended to give the women every opportunity to tell their story and to give information that would be helpful in making a decision. It is certainly very much on the side of the women, of listening to their stories and of seeing if we can improve the evidence in these few difficult cases. If the evidence can be built up as much as possible, it will enable them to be part of the scheme. That is the intention. I have met the lobby group to which the Deputy referred and I have sent it information about the interview group, which I will also make public.
98. Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív asked the Minister for Justice and Equality the steps she is taking to ensure there are no breaches of the Official Secrets Act by prison officers about prisoners' private affairs; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [43790/14]
I visited Limerick Prison on 30 October. On 31 October I was contacted by a reporter who seemed to have very detailed information about that visit that could only have come from within the Irish Prison Service. I understand that such leaking is not an uncommon occurrence. What will the Minister do to stop this activity, which is totally in breach of regulations?
First, I acknowledge that I received the Deputy's letter on 17 November. Second, I regard the divulging of information regarding prisoners' private affairs as a very serious matter and one that will not be tolerated.
In the course of a prison officer's work, clearly, he or she may have access to or hear information concerning the personal affairs of a prisoner or an employee. I agree with the Deputy that such information, irrespective of the format, is strictly confidential. Any member of the Irish Prison Service who discharges or divulges information to a third party - as in the Deputy's case, in which information was reported in the media - is not only contravening policy, but is also contravening the law. The breach of confidence is an offence under the Prison (Disciplinary Code for Officers) Rules 1996, which state that "divulging, communicating, publishing or causing to be divulged, communicated or published any information not lawfully available to members of the public which comes to his or her knowledge from official sources or derives from his or her duties" constitutes a breach of discipline.
I have discussed this matter with the director general of the Irish Prison Service following the Deputy's letter to me. It is open to a governor, where it appears an officer may have committed a breach of discipline of this nature, to carry out an investigation under the code of discipline, and if he or she is satisfied that the alleged breach is a serious one, to proceed to an oral hearing on the matter under the code. Although I will not go into detail, a series of penalties are available. In addition, when officers are recruited to the Irish Prison Service, they must sign an agreement under the Official Secrets Act 1963.
As well as speaking to the director general of the Irish Prison Service following the Deputy's letter, I have sought a full report from him on the circumstances surrounding this specific matter. The Deputy is entitled to privacy if he is making a visit to a prison. We do not in any way, and never would, condone the leaking of this kind of private information about somebody who is a prisoner.
I thank the Minister not only for her answer but for the comprehensive way in which she has dealt with the question. I have never hidden this issue. In fact, I and a number of colleagues spent the day in Maghaberry Prison yesterday and were there for a number of hours. Therefore, it is not the fact that I was in the prison that concerns me, but the fact that a prisoner's private, confidential information was leaked - for example, the details of the room we met in and how long the conversation took, although that was slightly inaccurate because, while the visit was booked for two hours, I was not actually there for two hours.
The Minister said that law-breaking was potentially involved. In other words, it is illegal to leak information. What action is it intended to take in terms of a possible breach of the law?
It is unfair that the reputation of all other prison officers, and other staff, who comply with these laws is sullied by a small number who, for whatever reason, leak information. What steps have been taken to deal with the potential law-breaking that is prima facie involved here? Surely nobody should be beyond the law.
Can I assume that the Deputy has reported the incident to the Garda? Obviously, that is open to him if he believes there has been a breach of the Act. Obviously, it should be reported to An Garda Síochána, and I would assume the Deputy would do that, given that he was affected by it.
I am very happy to arrange a meeting with the Deputy and the director of the Irish Prison Service if the Deputy would like that. I have asked for a report from the director, Michael Donnellan, outlining what the Irish Prison Service knows. There is an official way to give information from the Irish Prison Service and this is the way it should be done if information needs to be made public. The Deputy is saying that it was not done in this instance. It would be appropriate for me in the first instance to get a report from the director and see what further action is necessary at that point.
Is the Minister telling me that even though all the facts of the case are potentially known to her and the director, no question will be raised by her in respect of an investigation into the breaking of the law unless I or the prisoner involved make a complaint to An Garda Síochána, and no legal action will be taken unless that complaint is made?
I am not saying that, but I am saying it is also open to the Deputy to make a direct complaint. In the meantime, I am happy to arrange for a meeting between the Deputy and the director of the Irish Prison Service. Depending on the content of the report, and taking account of what the Deputy said in his letter to me, clearly, legal advice will also be sought by the Irish Prison Service in respect of further action. I am not saying that the only way that can happen is for the Deputy to report it, but I am saying it is open to him to report it as well.
99. Deputy Bernard J. Durkan asked the Minister for Justice and Equality her response to the recently published report on the conduct of investigations into serious crimes by the Garda Inspectorate; if she has specific proposals to deal with issues raised; if she expects to implement all or most of the recommendations contained therein; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [43792/14]
This question relates to the recently published report of the Garda Inspectorate into the operations of An Garda Síochána, the extent to which the Minister proposes to implement all or most of the recommendations, and the extent to which, in the course thereof, recognition will be given to the tremendous work done by An Garda Síochána over many years in very challenging circumstances.
Last week, I received the report of the Garda Inspectorate. It is a very detailed report with more than 500 recommendations. It is suggested in the report that these recommendations are short, medium and long-term. Clearly, we need mechanisms to implement that report, and there are a variety of ways in which that report will be implemented. They include, in the first instance, establishing the type of expert group that the Garda Inspectorate said should drive this process, so I intend to establish this expert group very shortly.
Another recommendation that was made related to the statistics that are currently gathered and dealt with in PULSE. There were some concerns about reclassification. I have asked the CSO to carry out a review. It has suggested carrying out a review of the entirety of entries on PULSE - around 1 million - so that it can look not just at a sample, as the Garda Inspectorate did, but at 1 million entries, analyse them and see how much of the reclassification in the report is matched when one examines the overall entries. This will be very important to ensure confidence in the system.
The Cabinet justice sub-committee will also monitor the reforms that are under way, including those recommended in the Garda Inspectorate report. Obviously, the report will play an important role in the ongoing reform we have announced, which includes the establishment of the independent policing authority, strengthening the powers of GSOC and the current recruitment of the Garda Commissioner.
A range of actions need to be undertaken. The gardaí have announced a series of initiatives that are already under way, including a data quality unit. When crime statistics are being reported, the gardaí will provide more specialist staff to work with civilian staff. I believe this would make a difference as well. It is a very wide-ranging report and there are things we can do immediately. The investment in technology will be a very important part of the response as well.
I compliment the Minister on her detailed reply. Does she anticipate the implementation of a time limit for the various changes that are likely to take place? Over what period of time will they take place? Is it likely to take cognisance of the challenging circumstances within which An Garda Síochána has had to operate over a number of years?
One of the immediate priorities is to have a comprehensive plan in place in respect of the technology that An Garda Síochána needs. Clearly, that kind of investment was not made during the Celtic tiger years. This problem has not arisen overnight, but it is beyond time for us to make that investment and I intend to begin to make it once we have the report on Haddington Road from the Garda Inspectorate. The inspectorate report lays out a timeframe. There are initiatives that can be taken in the next year, the next two years and beyond, so the timeframe is there and I would like to adhere to it as much as possible. Certainly, there are initiatives that can be taken immediately. The decision on technology is an important part of that, but there are many others relating to reforms of policing which can be implemented immediately.
