Olivia Mitchell (Dublin South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the report from the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Public Service Oversight and Petitions. I thank the committee for the report and congratulate it on the speed of its work. The report is comprehensive and all of us agree it is necessary.

Dealing with asylum has been a vexed issue for Ireland because we have experienced dramatic fluctuations in the number of people coming here over a short number of years. In 1994, just over 300 asylum seekers arrived on our shores, but over 11,500 arrived in 2002. The numbers dropped during the recession but are creeping up again. Last year there was a 50% increase on the previous year.

I was a Member of the House when the large numbers of people started to arrive to our shores seeking asylum. They were treated very differently from how they are treated now in terms of processing. They were treated as homeless persons and housed by local authorities. They received all the welfare services available to Irish citizens. However, the truth is that the services were quickly swamped. The local authorities, health services, education services and particularly our maternity hospitals found themselves unable to cope. Many pregnant women were brought directly from Dublin Airport to the Rotunda Hospital. It was something for which the hospitals could not plan.

The strain on the health, education, welfare and housing services and the growing cost of providing for asylum seekers demanded a rethink. Direct provision was introduced at that point. The change was also motivated by the difficulty the immigration services had in tracking asylum seekers when they arrived and dispersed around the country seeking work. It was very difficult to process their applications. It was particularly difficult to track unaccompanied minors, many of whom simply disappeared. They were supposed to be in the care of the health services but many of them just disappeared. To this day nobody knows what happened to many of them.

My recollection is that the introduction of direct provision was welcomed by most Deputies. It satisfied our consciences that migrants were being properly cared for, that they had access to health and education and were housed and fed. At the same time, it took problems that were becoming increasingly visible on the streets off the streets. There was a growing perception, and unfortunately there were complaints, that somehow asylum seekers were getting a better deal than Irish people and that they had easier access to housing and so forth. This was not the case. In reality, most of them were housed in bed and breakfast accommodation, which forced them out onto the streets during the day.

People considered the accommodation centres to be a perfect solution, but it was never envisaged that they would be a long-term solution and that families would live indefinitely in such conditions. It is unforgivable that people should spend years living in these centres and that entire childhoods should be spent there. I cannot begin to think of what the emotional and psychological effects are on children and what issues they will have in adult life.

In the media release from the Ombudsman on Wednesday he said the report called for the abolition of direct provision. To be honest, I did not see that in the report and I do not believe it should be abolished. However, it should be fixed. The report recommends bringing the system under the remit of the Ombudsman and making it subject to freedom of information. I am not convinced about either of those, particularly the latter. The justice system requires a level of confidentiality that might not apply to other areas of life. However, notwithstanding the legal status of their presence in this country, if asylum seekers are not going to have the same safeguards of their human rights as other citizens, it behoves the State to ensure that their human rights are protected and vindicated. I believe that will be recommended by the report of the working group and by the Minister.

The recommendations in the committee's report refer to the lack of privacy for families, the lack of income to pay for certain medicines, having to take children out of school to sign on and the absence of even basic self-catering facilities. These complaints are valid and should be examined as quickly as possible. That said, conditions in these reception centres are infinitely better than the conditions asylum seekers have left. However, they are not acceptable as a way of life that endures for years, and certainly not for seven and even 11 years in some cases.

Part of the problem is the length of time it takes to assess applications for asylum due to the three-stage process and the three appeal stages. The report suggests that the length of time is inexplicable, and I agree with that. It is no wonder that people call for asylum seekers to be allowed to work after a certain period as they await a decision. I understand this, because it must devastate people to have nothing to do day after day and year after year. It is ironic that training courses for work are provided but that they cannot work. However, I have a problem in regard to allowing asylum seekers to work. Apart from the fact that they are competing for jobs when there is a shortage of jobs for Irish citizens, there are other practical problems. The solution is not to allow them to work but to speed up the application process. I welcome the Minister of State's decision to introduce the fast-track single application process, which I hope will reduce the problem and prevent people from languishing indefinitely in these accommodation centres.

If we did not have a 10% indigenous unemployment rate and if we allowed asylum seekers to work, that would be like saying we were renouncing control of our borders entirely. We would be granting people who are here illegally the same rights to employment and the same freedom to move around the country as we accord our own citizens, EU citizens and citizens here on legitimate visas. Another danger is the pull factor if that kind of information is made known. Despite what one hears, few countries allow access to employment for asylum seekers. Most countries do not, and many go as far as putting asylum seekers into detention centres while they wait for their cases to be assessed. The solution is to get people out of reception centres as quickly as possible.

Our plan to introduce a single application process will not solve the problem on its own. The time involved is extended beyond the determining period by two factors. First, those who get a favourable decision on their application cannot move out because there is no accommodation for them. Therefore, they stay in the reception centres. Second, those who get an unfavourable decision are not deported. One way or another, many asylum seekers remain in the accommodation centres. This makes a complete farce of the asylum seeking system. Win or lose, few people move out of what was originally envisaged as temporary accommodation and very few are deported. Hopefully, the housing crisis will be resolved in time, but we need to get back to a situation in which rejection of an asylum seeker's application means something and those whose asylum claims are invalid are deported. Otherwise, there is no point to the system.

Relative to other countries, such as Italy, the number of people seeking asylum in Ireland is very small. This will change, whether we like it or not. The number of people crossing the Mediterranean will continue to increase for as long as the gap in the standard of living between Europe and Africa exists. World population growth will start to decrease in approximately 30 years, but in the meantime most of the expected 2 billion growth in the world population, from 7 billion to 9 billion, will happen in sub-Saharan Africa. If people are poor and hungry in Africa today, they will be poorer and hungrier then and will want to leave. I do not believe that sinking or capturing boats in the Mediterranean will do anything to stop the wave of immigrants coming from Africa. It is time to think about investing in solving the problem at source and reducing the push factors of poverty, famine and conflict, which make it seem worthwhile to many asylum seekers to risk their lives trying to cross the Mediterranean. Hundreds are doing so daily.

The Dublin Convention is not working. Italy has given up even trying to adhere to it and has effectively opened its northern borders to Europe, and asylum seekers are moving out of Italy in waves into Europe. This issue is influencing elections in Europe and will soon start to change governments. We need an honest debate on this issue in Ireland and in the European Union about what we will do to change this situation. Will we increase aid or change our policies in respect of Africa? Will we open our doors to Africa or will we close them completely? Alternatively, will we accept quotas, and if so, how many asylum seekers will we accept?

I was pleased to see that Ireland has increased the number of asylum seekers it will accept from Syria. Clearly, these people are asylum seekers. Tomorrow, I will visit the Turkish-Syrian border, where 2 million refugees and asylum seekers are waiting for the conflict to end or to move on into Europe. Turkey has accommodated these refugees at the moment. Imagine the situation if this number of people arrived into Ireland or Europe and the destabilising effect that might have. This is a wake-up call for Europe and for the need to have an honest debate on this issue. We must decide what we are going to do and then do it. One way or another, the wave of immigration is almost unstoppable and we need to plan how to handle it.

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