COMMITTEE ON HEALTH:A PROPER mechanism for complaints needs to be put in place in asylum centres if transparency in the direct provision system is to be attained, members of the Oireachtas Committee on Health said yesterday.

Members of the Reception and Integration Agency appeared before the committee yesterday after some committee members visited two asylum centres – St Patrick’s Centre in Monaghan and the former Butlins holiday camp in Mosney Co Meath – in July.

The agency is a unit of the Department of Justice and manages accommodation centres for asylum centres across the State.

The committee noted that, as part of the agency’s house rules, if asylum seekers were found to have deliberately made false or malicious complaints, it could affect their leave to remain, and that this was effectively discouraging them from complaining at all.

Sinn Féin TD Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin said the approach to complaints within the direct provision system reflected a “see no evil mindset” and that it refused to accept that people living in centres were intimidated into remaining silent about complaints.

Labour TD Kathleen Lynch asked how the agency could be sure that complaints were not genuine when no complaints system existed. “How do you know that people aren’t intimidated if you don’t have a proper, transparent mechanism?” she asked.

Noel Dowling, agency principal, said “there was no question” of it trying to suppress complaints.

“What we want is a system that works, in which people feel that they can make a complaint,” he said, adding that the original house rule derived from bad experiences which centre managers had in the past. He said, in acknowledgment of the committee’s concerns, an “ad hoc” complaints system would be put in place to address the issue.

“We are going to talk to our central managers with a view to having some sort of complaints recording system in place from January and that will be fairly publicly available.”

Mr Dowling said the direct provision system was Government policy and no cheaper alternative existed. He noted a system where asylum seekers could live in individual housing with social welfare support would cost twice as much.

Committee members raised other issues including the length of time to process asylum applications, nutrition and flexibility of meal times, mental health, overcrowding and complaints by asylum seekers over the carrying out of random inspections.