I listened carefully to the debate on this set of amendments last week on the concept of a community impact assessment. During the debate most speakers discussed the very real challenges they experienced in their own constituencies when faced with decisions to open emergency international protection accommodation - decisions that were made, for the most part, when I was Minister for integration. I wanted to come in on this amendment in particular to speak about how the State makes decisions about where IP accommodation is located and the speed with which it needs to make those decisions during a crisis situation. That is really important. I have read the provisions set out in this particular amendment. On the face of them, they appear neutral, but my concern with this amendment is that ultimately what a community impact assessment is about is achieving a clinical, reasoned decision that IP accommodation cannot be located in a particular area. My concern is that it is about finding a reason for a "No". I completely understand that. I completely understand the difficulties that political reps are faced with when they get a call from the community engagement team telling them of plans to locate international protection accommodation in their constituency or local electoral area. Ultimately what a Minister has to do, and what the State has to do, is find a "Yes". It has to find accommodation, particularly in emergency situations. The Minister has to meet the State's legal obligations. Those legal obligations were reiterated by the High Court in judgments again only last week. But the Minister also has to meet the State's moral obligations - not to leave vulnerable people on the streets, not to have families and children camping in tents, in the same way that male international protection applicants were left on our streets for far too long. The Minister, Deputy Jim O'Callaghan, and the Minister of State, Deputy Brophy, now face the challenge of accommodating people who are seeking international protection. That challenge has been made slightly more manageable by the decrease of about one third in the number of IP applicants who have been arriving seeking international protection since October 2024. Prior to that month, there was an average of approximately 1,500 people seeking international protection every month. Since then, on average, give or take, the average has fallen to about 1,000 people per month. It is still an incredibly difficult job. If there is one piece of agreement across this Chamber, it is this: the State has to move away from the huge reliance on the private providers of international protection accommodation. I had wanted to do that in my term. I had set out to do that in my term in office but I was not able to achieve that in light of the huge increase that we saw in the number of people seeking accommodation. In 2020, it was 1,500 people. By 2024, it was 18,500. We were dealing with that dramatic spike in accommodation need at the same time we were accommodating over 100,000 Ukrainians. I urge the Ministers, where now the numbers they are seeking accommodation for are slightly more manageable, to implement the accommodation plan that was agreed by the Government in 2024. The Ministers should use this time to begin that vital switch toward significant amounts of State-owned accommodation. They should put the same energy that they put into the deportation flights, into creating that charging regime for international protection applicants and making citizenship and family reunification that bit harder, into driving forward State-owned provision. By doing that, we do two really important things. We start to address the very fair critique of the level of money going into private providers. We start to address those key financial concerns. As well as that, the State will actually have control over where accommodation is located. That will allow the State to proactively plan where international protection applicants are housed, and, in doing so, it will actually allow the State to start to address the concerns that are probably at the basis of this particular amendment. They are concerns about capacity within communities and pressure on services. It will allow the targeting of additional supports. Driving forward State-owned provision of international accommodation has to be at the centre of this debate. I do not feel, whether it is in this discussion that we are having on this legislation, or the wider discussion about migration that we have been seeing since the new Government was appointed, that issue, which is key to addressing the concerns that this amendment is about, and wider concerns, that issue is not getting the attention it deserves.

Sentiment score: 0.09