It is great to see the team of the Minister and the Ministers of State here divvying up the workload of the Department. It is progressive politics and I am glad to see that the Minister, Deputy McEntee, has since had her baby and all is going well on that front.

I want to ask our team serving the Department of Justice how the processing of international protection applications is going.

Has it been stymied or delayed in any way by Covid-19? What mitigating measures are being taken by the Department to speed things up a little bit?

I thank the Deputy for raising an important matter encountered by people who seek international protection. I am very conscious of the difficulties and trauma encountered by people who seek international protection and I am glad that, throughout the pandemic, my Department's international protection office has remained open to allow people the opportunity to do so in line with our international obligations.

The provision of the facility to allow people claim international protection is considered an essential service at all times, including during Covid-19. Staff have worked both on-site and remotely since the pandemic began to ensure the protection process continues to operate and I am grateful for their effort and dedication. Physical attendance in the office has been strictly limited in line with public health guidance. Ensuring the safety of applicants, legal representatives and staff has resulted in additional logistical challenges that have limited the processing of applications and efforts to improve processing times, including the target set to make first instance decisions in the vast majority of cases within nine months. Despite these challenges, 2,276 applications for international protection were processed to completion last year, which is just under 67% of the total achieved in 2019.

My Department's main focus now is to get its processing system functioning as effectively and efficiently as possible, while adhering to all measures in place to combat the spread of Covid-19. We continue to explore new ways of working. In-person contact and support is an indispensable part of the process, but also presents the greatest challenge at this time. From 10 May, interviews in Dublin by video link were commenced. The applicant is in one room linked by videoconference to an interviewer in another room of the same building. This is in full compliance with health and safety guidance. Interviews by video link from Cork have also resumed and we are working to expand our videoconferencing programme with a view to making interviews by videoconference a significant element of international protection operations and to use them going forward. My Department is committed to implementing the key recommendations in the expert advisory group report.

I thank the Minister of State. It sounds like a big effort is being made to clear any backlog and I appreciate that. I am from Meelick, County Clare and since the Hungarian revolution in 1956, there has been, on an on-off basis, refugees and asylum seekers in our community. We value them. We have got to know their stories over the years. They are harrowing, compelling and are not always heard. As a local person, who taught in the local school for a number of years, I have stood as guarantor to help some of those asylum seekers with the legal process. Overall, I do not think direct provision is ethical or humanitarian. It also does not provide value for money. It has cost €175 million in the past year to provide direct provision accommodation for 5,200 people. That breaks down roughly to €33,000 per person. It costs the State €170,000 per annum to accommodate a family of five at a time the average house price in Clare is €200,000. We must move to a point where direct provision ends in 2024, as the Government has committed to, and we house asylum seekers within the country so they can become active citizens of Ireland.

I thank the Deputy. I am aware of his genuine interest in this matter. My Department is committed to implementing the key recommendations of the expert advisory group report to reduce processing times of both first instance decisions and appeals to six months, as outlined in the White Paper to end direct provision and establish a new international protection support service. Work is under way in my Department towards identifying mechanisms to support improved processing times, including an end-to-end review of processes, which is being undertaken to streamline processing as much as possible.

In the context of the current backlog of international protection cases, my Department intends in the first instance to prioritise the processing of all cases using improved processes and the planned ICT investment in the system. My Department will, by October 2022 at the latest, commence a review of the progress made in reducing and improving processing times.

I appreciate the Deputy's genuine interest in this topic and his compassion for people in the refugee centre in his county, which is one of the oldest in the country.

It is welcome that direct provision will cease three years from now and people will be accommodated, helped and aided in different ways. However, there is a real concern within both the local direct provision centre and the wider community that enough might not be done to support those seeking international protection between now and then.

Perfect cognisance is not always taken of the situations that those seeking direct provision accommodation face in their home countries. I know of one man who, for several years, slept in the dugout of our local GAA pitch because he feared sleeping in accommodation by night beside individuals with whom he would have been fighting and in conflict in his homeland. We need to have more cognisance of where these people are coming from when we accommodate them. We need to look beyond 2024 and consider what we will do with direct provision centres and the land on which they sit. Meelick GAA club, Parkville Football Club, Ballynanty soccer club, Thomond Rugby Football Club and Limerick IT are all on our doorstep in Meelick. It would be a good gesture of the State to give a little back, in the form of sporting provision, to a community that has supported people seeking international protection for almost 70 years.

The Deputy is correct. People who seek refuge in this country have often experienced traumatic events that have led them to seek the protection of another state. The White Paper proposes that the new system should be operational by 2023. My Department will be represented on a programme board to be established and chaired by my colleague, the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Deputy O'Gorman, which will set performance indicators for the new model and monitor progress against those indicators. My Department is responsible for progressing improvements in processing times for international protection applications in the intervening period and we will not be found wanting in that regard. Any decisions on accommodation, including future arrangements for any existing centre, are, of course, a matter for the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman.

The Deputy has raised an important point. In bringing in all of these new processes, we must always keep in mind the people who are affected, namely, the people seeking refuge and the local communities. We must ensure that both of those communities are supported and put into a place of being able to integrate and support each other.