No international protection applicant should be sleeping in a tent in a public park in any part of this country. Yet, in my constituency, in Herbert Park, it is a regular occurrence of late that international protection applicants are sleeping in tents in a park beside a playground that people frequent with their families and children. From the questioning I have done in the public accounts committee, we know the average duration of stay of an international protection applicant in a tent is less than two days. We are paying €1 million for an NGO to refer international protection applicants in a tent to an accommodation service. As the International Protection Act comes into being very shortly, can the Taoiseach say that there will no longer be tents in public parks anywhere in this city in which international protection applicants will be sleeping? Operationally, we can make changes to prevent that happening. Even at the smaller numbers that we had in the past, this is not sustainable. Nor is it fair on the international protection applicants or the communities in which these tents are being put up.

Sentiment score: -0.11