I raise the case of a young man which exemplifies much of what is not working in our asylum system. His name is Tayeb. He lives in Scariff, County Clare. The Taoiseach will know Scariff; he was there a few months ago to announce public expenditure and forget to invite public representatives from outside the Government parties. That can happen.

You were there.

I was there. People in Scariff are hospitable and few would remind the Taoiseach of that. They are generally kind and forgiving people. Tayeb quite likes it there but there is no university in Scariff. He has been offered a place in UCD which he wants to take up. He wants to get on with his life. He applied for asylum on 5 January along with his parents. He made his way from Gaza to Egypt and from Egypt to Ireland. He has asked if he can transfer accommodation to Dublin so he can attend university, where he has been offered a place. He has been told "No". However, in the event he can finance private accommodation, they will keep his place in Scariff so he can go back on holidays. That indicates they are willing to spend money to accommodate him in Scariff where there is no university, but not in Dublin where there is. He wants to get on in life, contribute and work.

Six months after you apply for asylum, you have a right to work in Ireland. Six months is set out because it is accepted you should have an asylum claim processed in that time. His asylum claim has not been processed and will not be processed in that time because our times are painfully slow. We say the new migration pact will be a magic bullet but there is nothing preventing the Department from speeding up processing times already. However, it has not done so, as the Taoiseach well knows, having been a Minister in the Department.

He applied for a work permit but has not received a reply to that either. He is effectively a burden on the Irish State but he wants to work, go to college and get on with his life. So do the vast majority of people who come to Ireland but they are not being processed quickly.

While the Government at a macro level is keen to be seen to be doing the right thing around asylum and around Palestine, when it comes back to the individual it is utterly dysfunctional. It does not work. Why is it taking so long to process asylum claims? When Syrians came to Ireland, a specific scheme was set up so their applications could be expedited. For the very few Palestinians coming to Ireland, what is being done? It is all well and good to engage in international diplomacy about recognising a state but how about recognising the humanity of an applicant who has had family members die, who has come here from Palestine and who wants to get on with his life and contribute to the society in which he finds himself?

I enjoyed my visit to Scarriff and meeting the Deputy there. I apologised for the Deputy not receiving a formal invite and I wish him well with his new-----

It was all the other public representatives who were not there.

The Deputy was looking out for the others. I thank him. I appreciated seeing him there and wish him well with his new role in the European Parliament.

The Deputy raised a number of elements and I will try to work through them. We need to be honest with people on accommodation. The Deputy rightly raised the situation of a young man doing his best to get educated and get to work. That is something everybody is instinctively supportive of. I also need to be truthful that we have about 31,000 people in emergency accommodation. We all know and the Deputy has highlighted in the House that there is huge pressure on the system when it comes to accommodation. We are not in a position currently to provide accommodation at a location of international protection applicants' choice. When the Deputy boils that down to an individual case, I can see how difficult it is because these are human beings, but that is the truth. As we move beyond the emergency system and try to build a sustainable migration system, which we are doing in real time, one would hope we would be in a different position in relation to that.

I will directly follow up the individual case. It is an example of the broader issue. The Deputy is right that an international protection applicant has a right to work here after six months. I meet many small businesses across the country which are looking for labour. People are not looking to be sitting here on welfare. Peter Burke knows well there are businesses which would be delighted to give people an opportunity to earn a few bob and help the local economy.

Once someone has waited at least five months from the application received date, they can lodge their application. I have been told that in February 2024 a new online system was brought in to try to have a shorter processing time for applications. The system is currently processing applications made in April, in a processing time of around ten weeks. I will get the Deputy more detail on that because that does not seem to be the experience. The Minister of State, Deputy Burke, tells me that when it comes to work permits, which I know is a slightly different system, roughly 20 days is the processing time.

More broadly in relation to international protection applicants, we are making some progress. I accept we are not where we want to be yet but we have doubled the number of staff in the international protection office. Despite only doubling the number of staff, they are trebling the number of decisions made. They are working extraordinarily hard. We have seen 11,052 people apply up to 5 July this year, compared to 5,625 last year. It is important to be truthful about this and the honest to God answer is we are trying to build a system for a much larger number of applications in real time. That requires not just extra staff, which will be forthcoming, and extra budget, which is forthcoming, but looking at using technology, operating more efficiently and effectively, doing online interviews and using facilities like CityWest and not just the international protection office. That work is under way.

I completely understand the State cannot accommodate people where they want to be accommodated. That is not my complaint; my complaint is he cannot work to earn the money to pay for accommodation in Dublin.

The Taoiseach says people can apply after five months and then it takes ten weeks but they have a right after six months so the Taoiseach is implicitly acknowledging the right to work is being denied. That right was gained in a Supreme Court case. It was fought tooth and nail by the Government at all stages but, ultimately, that case determined the right to work of asylum seekers after six months.

We are treating people like chattels and moving them around the State rather than making any meaningful attempt to integrate them. There are beneficiaries of temporary protection who have been moved out of Loop Head, an area of depopulation where they have been integrated and where people want them to stay. They are being moved because of compliance issues. I have been asking questions and finding it very difficult to get answers, as usual, as to what the compliance issues are and what is happening. Regardless, they are not the fault of people who are looking to integrate, who have children in school and who are being told that, because of compliance issues, their children cannot go to school next week or month but have to go to another part of the country and start the integration process all over again. If we are going to accept people, and we have an international duty to do so, we have to put systems in place to integrate them and not move them around the country like chattels.

I agree with the last point. Of course we have to put systems in place and built a sustainable migration system. I assure the Deputy a huge amount of work is under way daily to make that happen. We will have another Cabinet committee on migration tomorrow. The Minister for integration, the Minister for Justice and others are working intensively on this.

I am very proud of their work. I do not say this to be argumentative in what is possibly our last exchange but there is sometimes an inconsistency in the approach we take to this. This is not aimed directly at Deputy McNamara but when I go around the country or when I come into this House, people say to me that we cannot keep using hotels and taking public facilities out of use. Then, all of a sudden we have a significant reduction in the number of people from Ukraine in accommodation. We are spending a lot of money on hotels and bed and breakfast accommodation, so we say that we will give some of the hotels back and put them back into public use. Then people say, and I understand this on a human level and see it in my own constituency, that they do not want us to move the people from their community. As the Taoiseach, I have to try to have an overview here. The reality is that we are trying to make sure we have a sustainable accommodation supply and do not have a situation-----

That is not what I asked, in fairness.

I do not want to personalise this to Ukraine but the Deputy is talking about people living in one area and having to move to another. That is often because we find there is a building that is half-used for which the taxpayer is paying. I cannot stand over that either. All of this is hard; none of it is easy but it all has to be done in a compassionate way. These are human beings with rights but it is just an indication of some of the challenges we face in trying to balance the various responsibilities.