My Department is taking action across all aspects of international protection accommodation to ensure we improve value for money, strengthen governance and compliance, and renegotiate contracts with providers. This forms part of the overall reform of the international protection system that is already working to speed up the processing of applications and move away from commercial provision to more State-owned accommodation. This reform will help to drive down costs. The Minister and I are absolutely committed to driving down the costs in this area. My Department took over responsibility for international protection accommodation from 1 May last and has worked closely with the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General on carrying out an extensive review of costs and processes within the international protection accommodation system. This was published last week as part of the Comptroller and Auditor General’s Report on the Accounts of the Public Services 2024. All recommendations in the report have been accepted and implemented by the Department, with one recommendation to be implemented in 2026. The report examined overall processes and sampled 20 IPAS contracts. It acknowledges the extensive challenges posed to the State to source accommodation during what was an unprecedented period, namely from 2022 to 2024. During this period, over 45,000 additional international protection applicants arrived in Ireland. Prior to this, a typical three-year period would have seen close to 8,000 or 9,000. Today’s standards of pre-contract assessment and negotiation could not be applied to accommodation between 2022 and 2024, basically because of the pace at which people were arriving. While applications this year have, thankfully, reduced, they remain high compared with pre-2022 norms. This has given sufficient space to put in place greater controls over the IPAS accommodation portfolio. We have put a range of updated and strengthened systems and procedures in place and these are already beginning to have a genuine impact. IPAS has put improved processes in place for appraisal, validation, contracting and payments. A new rate-card pricing structure is being applied to all new or renewing contracts, which has resulted in savings of over €52 million across 104 contracts since May of this year.
Sentiment score: 0.21
To outline the position again, we have accepted the recommendations in the Comptroller and Auditor General’s report. We absolutely recognise them. We have put in place contract reviews designed to deliver genuine savings. We recognise that due to the surge that took place from 2022 to 2024, we were not in a position to have the relevant structures in place, but we now are and we are actually delivering genuine savings. The most important point related to this has two aspects: first, we must ensure that, going forward, we have the contracts in place delivering savings; and second, reflecting the position we have taken and on which we are absolutely focused, we must move where possible to having State-owned services that actually deliver substantial savings rather than having commercial providers. These two steps combined will deliver much better value for money in the system, which is what we all want to see. In partnership with doing that, we are also looking at all those contracts as they come up, with a view to putting in place a new contract rate card that also delivers savings.
Sentiment score: 0.25
As I have said to the Deputy, all contracts we are now putting in place have checks and balances in respect of tax clearance certificates.
Sentiment score: 0.48
We are totally transparent in publishing details of all payments made, and we do that regularly. We believe the contracts we are now putting in place are absolutely clear and deliver on some of the things the Deputy is asking about. I understand that, in the case the Deputy mentioned, the water provision issue has been completely addressed and what he described is not happening at this point. However, it is important that contractors provide their service in the correct and proper way to the State. Through the contracts we are putting in place now, we are determined to deliver in this regard.
Sentiment score: 0.20