Mr. Gary Daly:

It is very important to humanise the people who are worst affected by what is happening, namely, the refugees themselves. I will share with the committee a story about a client of mine. I got an email on 10 January from a client. She sent me some pictures from the window of her room in the Travelodge in Ballymun. The three pictures showed the crowd outside her bedroom window. She also sent me a screen shot of her appointment at the Coombe Hospital where she was due to give birth on 23 January. She then sent me a screen shot of the email she had sent to the manager of the Travelodge begging to be moved. The text of her email was basically that she was afraid for the life of her as yet unborn child. These are the people who are affected by protests directly outside direct provision centres. We need to get people to understand that these are real people.

Racism is a relatively new construction. It was developed a few hundred years ago to legitimise the cross-Atlantic slave trade. It was done to dehumanise people so that other people would not feel sorry or sympathy for slaves as they were dragged across the Atlantic to work in cotton fields.

It is extremely important to maintain the dignity and security of those affected by the protests taking place and also those who are subjected to the direct provision system. I am very confident that my client, or any other asylum seeker I would be aware of in the system, would not be happy to speak on a national platform until he or she had secured status. There are, however, brilliant people in the Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland, MASI, people like Lucky Khambule, Bulelani Mfaco, Mavis and Donnah who are amazing advocates. If they or others involved with MASI humanise the stories, such as the story I have just shared about my client who only arrived in Ireland at the end of December, it would certainly help to counter the misinformation Deputy Ward spoke about.

On the issue of information, there is an enormous amount of misinformation being circulated. As somebody who works as a solicitor in the area, I find it very annoying and particularly frustrating. I received a list of questions from several people. I have developed a ten-page document - it is growing longer - providing answers to those questions and a lot of information. For example, this narrative of unvetted males is simply not true. There are security checks and there is a vetting procedure, including fingerprints being put through the Eurodac system. I will not bore the committee with it now but there is a very detailed vetting procedure. We need to get that information out there to combat this narrative. It is much more difficult to answer questions with detailed answers that it is to provide the simple narrative that these people are all unvetted and a threat.

I am sure everyone is aware of the awful stories of racism and lynching from America and where this current wave of racism leads. It is incumbent on prominent figures to be aware and in that regard I am conscious of the directions of the Chair. There have been prominent figures, some of whom are politicians or retired politicians, who have made comments, for example, that Albanian and Georgian asylum seekers are not worthy of claiming asylum. I have with me country of origin information, including on the difficulties in Georgia. Georgia is partially occupied by the Russian army. South Ossetia is occupied by the Russian army, which continues to encroach on land, much as Israel is doing in Palestine with an ongoing land grab. There is violence and war going on in Georgia at the moment. I do not know anybody who would want to go on holidays to Georgia. This is not to be disrespectful to Georgia. It is deemed to be a safe country but a safe country is a very difficult bar. Again, while being conscious of the directions of the Chair, the former British Home Secretary who went on to become Prime Minister deemed Afghanistan to be a safe country for the return of asylum seekers in 2015. Yet, 2015 became the second bloodiest year in the history of the invasion of Afghanistan in 2003. It is incumbent on people in prominent positions not to repeat narratives that feed into the narrative of the far right.