Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

This does not make sense. We have labour shortages in a large number of areas, from the health service to special needs education, childcare and construction. I could go through a list. Despite this, thousands of people who are forced to live in fairly inhumane conditions in direct provision centres, many of them in isolated areas, want to work but cannot do so. This does not make sense for them or for society. Why should applicants be forced to wait nine months and why does this apply only in the case of a first application? It should be remembered that many of the people who get the right to asylum in this country have previously been refused in the first application. The particular case which led the Supreme Court to strike down the Department's ban on employment for asylum seekers involved a man who had been in direct provision for eight years. He was a member of what we know to be a persecuted group, the Rohingya, who subsequently got the right to stay but was forced to exist in direct provision for eight years. Rather than forcing people into the isolation, stigma and hardship of direct provision centres, why does the Department not give them the right to work and make it easy for them to contribute to and benefit society? I am glad that a review is upcoming. I hope the Minister of State will take serious steps to address the many obstacles asylum seekers face, including their inability to get driving licences and their isolation from transport services caused by the location of the direct provision centres. He should examine these issues and recognise that these are people who could and want to make a contribution to our society.

See this speech in context