Mr. Wendy Muperi:

I appreciate the invitation to present before this committee. The Irish Refugee Council is a 30-year-old charity that supports and advocates for people seeking protection and refugees in Ireland. We give people information and legal representation. We have housing, education, youth work and employment programmes. We also advocate for changes and improvements to the asylum process. In 2022, we gave direct and substantial support to more than 11,000 people, received more than 5,000 email queries and answered more than 24,000 calls to our helplines.

How should we think about refugee integration? A recent large-scale study of integration that took place in the UK broke integration down in to the following helpful headings, which may be useful when framing this discussion. It set out five domains under the heading of "Markers and Means", which are work, housing, education, health and social care, and leisure.

These domains represent the context in which integration can take place, as well as major areas of attainment that are widely recognised as critical to the integration process. There are three domains within the framework under the heading "Social Connections", which are social bridges, social bonds and social links. These recognise the importance of relationships to our understanding of the integration process and elaborate different kinds of relationships that contribute to integration. The study identified five facilitators, which are language, culture, digital skills, safety and stability. These represent key facilitating factors for the process of integration. There is one domain within the framework under the heading "Foundation", which is rights and responsibilities. This represents the basis upon which mutual expectations and obligations that support the process of integration are established. Perhaps we can also add particular building blocks or considerations to refugees. These include for, example, trauma, family links, length of time spent in the process and the situation in the person’s country of origin.

I move to our recommendations. What is the current state of refugee integration? It is worth emphasising that 2022 was an exceptional year. More than 70,000 people have arrived in Ireland in the last year. More than ever, an effective refugee integration strategy is needed. Our recommendations and ideas are as follows. The first concerns integration strategy and departmental capacity. The State has an integration strategy but it is gathering dust. It should be revised and renewed, particularly to take into account the developments of the last year. The capacity and resources of the Department responsible for children should be boosted to develop this.

Our recommendations also concern the relationship between time spent in the asylum process and integration from day one. While time spent in the asylum process is decreasing, the median processing time for cases processed to completion in 2022 was 18 months. Some studies have identified an integration window. Actions that are targeted and occur soon after arrival have disproportionately positive effects. The State’s previous integration strategy did not consider people still in the asylum process.

Concerning housing and transition from direct provision, nearly 4,000 people have status and can in theory leave direct provision but cannot do so in practice. This, in our experience, seriously inhibits a person from moving on with their life in Ireland.

Obtaining citizenship can provide a considerable boost to someone’s integration prospects. Efforts to try to streamline the State’s citizenship processes in recent years are welcome.

On crisis recovery, the asylum process is currently under considerable stress. Until and unless we recover from this situation, in our October 2022 paper on this crisis we recommended the guiding principles should be as follows. The first concerns safeguarding and protection of basic human rights. The IRC is deeply concerned by plummeting standards in protection accommodation. It is essential that health and safety, child protection and reception conditions rights are protected. Second, ensure adequate resources for Departments, services, NGOs and communities. The third concerns personnel. Support is also needed for medical, education and other services across the country. Fourth is the need for greater communication with people seeking protection, the public and communities. Finally, ensure existing recommendations are implemented. There are multiple reports where many of the recommendations and ideas remain unimplemented.

I thank members for listening to our opening remarks and we look forward to answering questions.