Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Thomas Pringle for moving the motion. It is something that should have been addressed a long time ago. It is disappointing that the new Government left it so long to even think about it.

In June this year, a representative of the Government, the former Tánaiste Deputy Eamon Gilmore, lobbied on behalf of 50,000 Irish citizens living and illegally working in the USA. He argued that these immigrants should be granted legal status so that they could be allowed to participate fully in American society. I support that appeal. However, when it comes to the treatment of asylum seekers in Ireland, no one from the Government is lobbying to grant legal status to these immigrants. Is our Minister content with the fact that the Government adopts a double standard on the treatment of immigrants? It is apparent that the Government's stance on migration is determined by the nationality of the immigrants and in which country they are immigrants. If the migration is of Irish citizens to another country, many of them helping to lower the unemployment statistics when they leave, the Government is all in favour of immigrant rights. However, here at home we have the hypocrisy of the Government withholding legal rights for asylum-seeking immigrants and their children, many of whom are Irish-born. They are placed in direct provision facilities where a process which is supposed to take months can take years. According to the Irish Human Rights Commission, it takes between five and ten years in many cases.

Ireland and Lithuania are the only two countries in Europe to have opted out of the EU's reception directive, the law which states that if a country has not given a decision on an asylum seeker's application for refugee status within six months, it must allow that applicant to work while a decision is awaited. The Minister, Deputy Francis Fitzgerald, is on record very recently as saying she completely rules out any possibility of giving asylum seekers the right to work. Will she reconsider that? I do not understand why she is so dogmatic about it. Is she afraid it will cost the State money? I ask her to reconsider, as this is a very negative policy for our Government to stick with. It would make a great difference if we allowed these people the opportunity to work. It is the absence of a right to work and an opportunity to integrate into society, contribute to it and feel like a valuable, dignified human being that is the root cause of the problems around this issue.

The Government says the reason for the long delays in making the final decisions on asylum seekers' refugee applications or immigration status applications is at least partly the fault of the asylum seekers themselves, who ask the High Court to conduct a judicial review of every decision at every step of the process. Each judicial review can take two or more years to be completed in the High Court. However, the full truth is that the State bears much of the responsibility. The first consideration as to whether an asylum seeker should be granted refugee status comes from international law, specifically the Geneva Convention. The first stage of deciding whether an asylum seeker is a refugee involves the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner. The commissioner's decision can be appealed to the Refugee Appeals Tribunal, the decision of which can in turn be appealed to the High Court if the way in which it was arrived at was unfair - for example, where a decision was irrational in light of the evidence submitted or where too much or too little weight was given to certain evidence. After consideration of an individual's application for refugee status fails, there are further legal ways to seek permission to remain the State, including the granting of humanitarian leave to remain, which comes from Irish law, or the granting of leave to remain based on subsidiary protection grounds, which comes from EU law.

The State chooses this fragmented approach with many stages, each of which is judicially reviewable, as opposed to the single procedure adopted by every other EU state. The State's complex method and series of steps and decisions provides many opportunities for judicial review instead of just one. Because the decisions taken by the lower State bodies - that is, the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner and the Refugee Appeals Tribunal - are so frequently ill-judged, they are easily challengeable in the High Court for failing to comply with basic rules of constitutional fairness. There is a high success rate when these decisions are challenged. Another reason the delay is attributable to the State is that it does not provide legal assistance or free legal aid at the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner or Refugee Appeals Tribunal stages. Thus, procedural unfairness occurs in these processes which would usually be challenged at the relevant time by an individual's solicitor. This procedural unfairness is then viewed as a weakness in the decision, which allows it to be challenged later in the High Court by way of judicial review. If the State provided free legal aid at those early stages, any issues of procedural fairness would be dealt with then and would not taint the eventual decisions arrived at.

While the Government is planning to change Irish law and introduce legislation for a single-procedure system, we have yet to see the detail of the legislation. It is generally considered a positive move as it would bring us in line with the rest of Europe and would certainly be welcomed. However, this will only apply to future applicants who arrive on our shores seeking asylum. The new single procedure will not apply to or help in any way the 4,000 people currently languishing in direct provision, of whom close to 1,500 are children. Many of those children were born in Ireland but do not have the right to Irish citizenship because of the change in citizenship law after the 2005 referendum. The only fair way to deal with these asylum seekers would be to grant an amnesty giving all of them permanent residency in Ireland, save in certain exceptional circumstances such as where a person has a serious crime record. I am not talking about driving offences, which some people have been hit for. This kind of amnesty would only apply to these 4,000 applicants and would be a recognition of the fact that the State has failed them. Most of us agree that has happened. The State's conduct in this regard has been assessed by many international and human rights bodies as a serious and continued breach of human rights law. A limited amnesty would not be a burden on the economy. It is a finite number of people comprising approximately 2,000 adults and their children. It would be symbolic, dignified and a healing gesture on the part of the State and Irish society in general, which would also have a very real and practical effect on the lives of these 4,000 people. The Minister has set herself very strongly against the idea of an amnesty for the 4,000, but I ask her to reconsider that also. If fairness is to apply, she must take another look at this. I realise she is worried about the cost that may be involved, but given that it is a finite number, we should give priority to human rights, dignity and fairness.

See this speech in context