Sr. Breege Keenan:

I would like to echo what Mr. Killoran says. However, he is speaking about migrants with stamp 3 visas. On the other hand, we have family reunification members where the sponsor is a refugee. If a refugee brings in, for example, his wife and three children, under family reunification, his wife will not get a permission letter in her own right. If the relationship breaks down and she applies for social welfare, in many cases the Department of Social Protection will ask for the permission letter. She will say that she has stamp 4 visa. They will say that she has to have a reason for this stamp 4 visa and that they need the letter. However, the sponsor never gets a letter. They get a decision from family reunification services to say that they have permission to bring in the names of, for example, three children. The refugee then applies for the visa, and the visa will be the only proof the wife has. Then we, like other organisations, advocate for her to get a permission letter from family reunification services in her own right. As we said earlier about permission letters, this is where it becomes complicated. The clients do not recognise that. They think that they have permission because they have their Irish residence permit card. The stress that causes for many families is unbelievable.

I will revert to Deputy Cairns's earlier point about Ireland not having enough refuges for women. A number of the women with whom we work here in Dublin at the moment are here in Dublin, but they were on housing authority lists down the country. Because there is no accommodation for them, they are in refuges and are accessing homeless services here in Dublin. They then have to reapply to Dublin to get on Dublin housing lists, because they cannot go back to the part of the country that they came from.