Despite the claim made today by Minister for Justice, Jim O’Callaghan, that his Department has made savings in the provision of asylum accommodation through IPAS, the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General which was referred to in the Dáil provides evidence of a system that is clearly not “fit for purpose.”
The report is based on an inspection of 20 properties leased by the State for the provision of IPAS accommodation which included visits to 13 of the properties. That is a small sample of the 326 centres in the state, and the object of the examination was to review whether:
“Sufficient due diligence/compliance checks are carried out by the IPAS prior to entering into contractual arrangements for temporary accommodation for IP applicants,” and whether “the IPAS has an adequate system in place for monitoring temporary accommodation contract performance.”
The findings would suggest that the overall picture is not satisfactory. I shall be expanding on this tomorrow but some of the takeaways from the Report are:
The examiners also found insurance certification for only 13 of the 20 properties on file – and revealed that evidence of ownership was found for just half of the 20 properties.
The Report ends with a raft of recommendations to tighten up the awarding and monitoring of the private accommodation for IPAS residents. I will be looking at these tomorrow and the overall and detailed findings related to the issues highlighted.
It is worth bearing in mind that the Report only deals with 20 of more than 320 IPAS contracts.