Dáil debates

Tuesday, 23 May 2023

Accommodation Needs for New Arrivals: Statements

 

8:00 pm

Photo of Catherine ConnollyCatherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity, however short, to take part in this debate. It is appalling that a small group of people would be allowed to burn out tents, board buses and block roads. That is unacceptable behaviour. Notwithstanding any genuine fears that a community may or may not have, that type of behaviour is unacceptable. That a man in his 70s is now in hospital as a result of what happened is shocking.

I understand that on Monday morning members of the National Party refused entry to vehicles carrying asylum seekers coming from Citywest Hotel to the Airways Industrial Estate. Let me condemn that behaviour out of hand. Now let me look at Government policy, which introduced direct provision in 2000 as a temporary measure. Here we are in 2023 and we are going backwards.

I welcomed Dr. Day's report and the White Paper. One of Dr. Day's main conclusions before the White Paper was a key conclusion that a system which places applicants for periods in accommodation with little privacy or scope for normality is not fit for purpose. We have been told that by Dr. Day. We know that from the White Paper. We know that from retired Mr. Justice McMahon, whose terms of reference forced him to merely look at making changes to the system, not abolishing it. We know it is not fit for purpose. We welcome the decision by the Government to end direct provision, but my difficulty at the time was that we were basing that on accommodation in the community and that was a complete denial of the accommodation crisis and a refusal to look at the accommodation crisis and the causes of it.

Twenty-three years after the introduction of direct provision, we are distinguishing between those of colour and those who come from non-Ukrainian countries. It is shocking that we would have a two-tier approach to asylum seekers and refugees. It is simply appalling. I have no idea how the Minister of State, Deputy Joe O'Brien, can stand over it. Approximately one fifth of the 20,400 people in direct provision are children. As of 6 April last, 5,197 people, more than 1,000 of them children, have no status and cannot go anywhere. They cannot get out of direct provision - 376 of them housed are in Galway - and yet we lay on every assistance to Ukrainian refugees, who I absolutely welcome. How can we distinguish between different wars? How can we do that and look somebody in the eye? It beggars belief.

What the EU has done is to deliberately create a distinction that leads to hatred and othering of people that tells us we have learned nothing from our experience. Now we are looking at cruise ships and various things like that when, over a long period, we should have been building non-profit-based direct reception centres.

We have put everything into the market and rewarded hotels and various accommodation centres for profit, while utterly failing to recognise that we needed a direct role, as in the case of the housing crisis. I welcome the fact we have now got communication from the Minister in respect of Galway and that more than 302 asylum seekers will be going to Galway. I hope we five Deputies in the area will have a meeting with the Minister and the Minister of State in respect of the benefits to all of us in Galway from that. Industrial units are not suitable, however. Their use needs to be temporary, and we need a long-term plan.

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