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I feed my children when they're hungry. Parents in direct provision don't have that choice.

Parents in direct provision have so few ways in which they can model healthy, productive adulthood for their children.

SITTING IN MY kitchen watching my toddler play with a saucepan, spoon and some dried pasta as though it was the season’s must-have toy, I feel very privileged. The 1,500 children living in direct provision in this country have no access to a kitchen – the heart of most Irish homes.

I recently visited a direct provision centre, one of a number throughout the country where families and individuals seeking international protection from persecution are placed by the State while awaiting a decision on their case. Children living in direct provision queue for food, along with their parents. They are served three meals a day in a canteen within the centre.

As the name direct provision implies, catering staff prepare the food; residents have no access to the cooking facilities. Parents living in the centre I visited tell me that their children often can’t eat the food served; every meal is spicy they say – too spicy for their children’s young palettes. I ask if there are children’s meals or if any alternative is provided if the children can’t or won’t eat what is offered. I am told there is not.

No recognition of children being children 

There is none of the flexibility that we can offer our children at home. If the rota states that a banana is part of Thursday’s breakfast menu and your child wants a banana on Monday, they’ll just have to wait. As a parent of two small children this seems like an impossibility to me. I often have to resort to plans B, C, and D to ensure my incorrigibly stubborn toddler doesn’t starve. Both have access to fruit and other healthy snacks between meals.

The idea of an active pre-schooler going without food between 8am and 1pm is foreign to me. I feed my children when they are hungry. The idea that I would have to tell my child that he must wait hours for a canteen to open so I can feed him is beyond me.

People living in direct provision are not permitted access to the main kitchen to cook for their children. Their cooking facilities extend only to a kitchenette containing a fridge, kettle and microwave. Children raised in direct provision have no memories of their parents cooking at the stove or serving a home cooked meal to the table. As someone who gets great satisfaction from cooking for and with her children, this is very sad. From a developmental perspective the damage to children’s life skills must be significant. For the parents to whom I spoke, the frustration of being prohibited from providing such basic care to their own children, is palpable.

A child’s most significant milestones go without much celebration

I asked parents raising children in Ireland’s direct provision system how they manage weaning – that exciting time when parents introduce their babies to first foods. Watching your baby’s reactions to new taste experiences – mashed banana, pureed carrot, sweet potato – is wonderful and wasteful. It is very much a hit and miss process (in my experience the carrot hits the floor and the bananas miss their mouth entirely).

I was told that parents are not provided with extra food when weaning a baby. They utilise the piece of fruit that comes with breakfast, usually a banana, apple (hazardous to a weaning baby uncooked) or orange. Parents are provided with baby formula until the child is 1 year old. Even here their ability to make choices for their baby is taken away. When the child turns one formula is no longer provided.

It occurs to me that the mums and dads I am speaking to have never had the opportunity to bake a birthday cake for their child. These most significant milestones go without much celebration anyway – children living in direct provision can never bring their friends home, because of insurance.

The average length of time which people spend in direct provision is four years. I spoke to a mother who has been waiting for a decision on her application for nearly a decade: “If I were in prison at least I would know my sentence “she tells me.

Direct provision denies parents the fundamental role of homemaker

Facing years of restricted access to food, some parents resort to cooking for their children in their bedrooms. Ironically, the health and safety concerns that are used to justify their exclusion from the centre’s kitchen result in far greater dangers as they are forced to supplement their children’s diets by cooking in their rooms. Using kettles and rice cookers next to their children’s beds, they put together simple meals which their children can, at least, eat.

The meals have to be simple, adults in direct provision receive only €19.10 per week from the State (Children receive €9.60 per week, unchanged since 2000). Even in their bedrooms they are subject to regulation, so parents must hide their cookers and kettles during the day for fear they will be removed by centre staff.

Parents in direct provision have so few ways in which they can model healthy, productive adulthood for their children. Frustratingly for these skilled and educated men and women, the State prohibits them from working. If they seek paid work they will face fines or imprisonment. Living on €19 a week, most leisure activities they might have shared with their children are cut off to them. This money is needed to pay for food, basic toiletries and school supplies. They can’t afford to be away from the Centre long enough to need to pay for their children’s lunch, let alone fund activities that they might share together.

Direct provision denies these mums and dads even the fundamental role of homemaker. The centre in which most of these families have spent four years of their lives (and some much longer) is not home. Home is not a place where systems, not parents, decide a child’s access to food, their diet and nutrition. Home is not a place where parents cook in secret.

Let children have a chance of a home

As we approach the 15 year anniversary of the introduction of direct provision in Ireland, my thoughts are with those 1,500 children living in Ireland’s direct provision system, and with their mums and dads.

This is a system which has cost the state €850 million, paid out to property developers and catering companies, to keep people in a manner which denies them and their children any chance of normality. These children, women and men who have come here because we, as an international actor, have offered shelter to those fleeing wars, conflict and human rights abuses, do not deserve unending sentences in what amounts to an open prison.

Let people work. Let parents provide for their children. Let children have a chance of a home.

The author of this piece is a member of an End Direct Provision Group in the Mid-West Region. Their identity is known to TheJournal.ie but is being withheld so as not to identify the Direct Provision centre they describe or its residents.

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    Mute Stephen Duggan
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    May 13th 2015, 6:34 AM

    I knew a fella that lost both feet to frostbite, he drank two hot whiskeys, and not only did his feet grow back, he got a part in riverdance. True story.

    376
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    Mute Ronan Sexton
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    May 13th 2015, 6:50 AM

    Pics, or it never happened.

    38
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    Mute Celticspirit321
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    May 13th 2015, 6:54 AM

    Even better, here’s the video https://youtu.be/jjxTTjJtXDA

    15
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    Mute John Fahey
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    May 13th 2015, 6:53 AM

    Irish whiskey, among many other Irish companies are missing out on major new markets, namely China.

    This is a MASSIVE new market, and their marketing is no where. You see Scottish whiskey advertisements everywhere, and as a result, Johnny Walker is being sold for crazy money over there, albeit mixed with bottles of green tea!

    Not only is Scottish whiskey advertised, but Scotland and its “brand” are shown, including images of golf (another booming industry!) etc. You see similar examples of France when cosmetics or wine is advertised.

    You do see Irish whiskey in shops, Jameson is available for approx €10 a bottle (made in Ireland too!) But it’s not treated as high end, where serious money can be made, by any means.

    Being a small nation, I feel our companies need a co-ordinated effort to help use brand “Ireland” to market themselves in China. Our government should be involved, as this will not only help boost exports, but also help to increase tourism etc. Reducing the visa paperwork will only go so far.

    An aggressive approach is very much needed. It would be a major boost for Ireland to be known in China as “being the best in the world” for something like whiskey, as it would help put us on their map, which we aren’t yet on.

    135
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    Mute Freddie Rincon
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    May 13th 2015, 3:56 PM

    Same in Latin America. I imagine they simply could’nt supply the demand? 20 brands of scotch the odd place will have Jameson.

    5
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    Mute Rory J Leonard
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    May 13th 2015, 7:42 AM

    Mr John Teeling is to be commended for his Trojan efforts in injecting new life into the Irish Whiskey sector over the past twenty years or so.

    This former University lecturer in Business studies, is a true Entrepreneur, who has practiced what he preached!

    77
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    Mute Chris
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    May 13th 2015, 12:34 PM

    Love the stuff too, great product.

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    Mute Mark Gerard Lochlain
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    May 13th 2015, 6:27 AM

    Yea purely for medicinal purposes!!!! *cough*!! Ya can bate a hot toddy sitting at a winters fire to kill the cold!!

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    Mute Emily Elephant
    Favourite Emily Elephant
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    May 13th 2015, 7:20 AM

    “We need the government to be innovative …”

    And that’s where I stopped reading.

    54
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    Mute Alan Corlett
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    May 13th 2015, 8:37 AM

    Whisky in brown envelopes, now there’s an idea :)

    16
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    Mute Conor O'Neill
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    May 13th 2015, 6:35 AM

    Hate whiskey. Taste like petrol and makes people crazy

    27
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    Mute richard fennessy
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    May 13th 2015, 7:31 AM

    Ooh your loss Conor

    46
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    Mute Hipster Enda
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    May 13th 2015, 9:12 AM

    You’ve been drinking the wrong whiskey

    28
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    Mute Joseph Siddall
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    May 13th 2015, 9:39 AM

    If it states “95 Octane” on the label you might want to think about changing your supplier.

    30
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    Mute josecafe
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    May 13th 2015, 7:16 AM

    Yeah the good ole whiskey will fix this country like the good ole days

    22
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    Mute Sloop John G
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    May 13th 2015, 7:40 AM

    Smells like teen spirits !!!

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    Mute Patrick Brompton
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    May 13th 2015, 10:02 AM

    An old Irish whiskey I would like to taste is “Tabby-toes” described by Molly Keane in a memoir called ‘The Athenry Country’ in her 1933 book called ‘Red Letter Days’. She writes’At an old Georgian house we dismounted from our horses, leading them around its wide-spread wings to the quiet stir of the stable yard, and presently sitting down to the best of all teas, eggs and bacon and potato cakes, preceded by a whiskey of peculiar excellence; an old liqueur brand extinct now, known as “Tabby-toes.” I cannot easily forget it. And through its mellowing warmth I can see again the strong and graceful lines of all the Chippendale and Sheraton furniture with which the dining room was crowded…’.

    12
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    Mute Colm Odinson
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    May 13th 2015, 3:17 PM

    A big problem is just how “scabby” Irish whiskey looks compared to the Scottish variety.

    Scottish whiskey is all about single malts, produced in small quantities, and sold at a luxury price. It gives off an air of luxury, sophistication, even a bit of mystery. They trade off the perceived romance of the Scottish highlands.

    Irish Whiskey is dominated by a few big brands, who churn out fairly homogenised stuff. It just utterly lacks the taste, variety and image of Scottish whiskey.

    I’m sure the Irish variety can change, but it would require a lot of investment into small businesses and a fair amount of imagination into how it’s marketed.

    4
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    Mute Big Yellow Crane
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    May 13th 2015, 10:59 PM

    Was just thinking that and that the brands which have disappeared up here; Coleraine, Dunvilles, Comber, didn’t exactly fire the imagination. But I’ve just read that Dunvilles is making a comeback with an Ards based distillery, Echlinville, releasing a batch under that name in 2016 so they must think there’s value in it.

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    Mute whereisspace
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    May 13th 2015, 11:10 AM

    Our great Irish-American family the Kennedy’s had a lot to do with the rise of the Scottish branded whiskies. People associate whiskey with the term “Scotch”, and a scotch in america is seen as an item of sophistication (notions! :-)) . This association of course travels internationally though the various american media outlets, films and tv shows that are sold throughout the world.

    Marketing has a lot to do with it, we’re a bit behind but I’m sure the Irish companies are doing their bit to make a positive change.

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    Mute Ian Aston
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    May 13th 2015, 12:25 PM

    Where can I buy those old Whiskey bottlles/jars from the picture?

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    Mute Ian Aston
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    May 13th 2015, 12:28 PM

    Ian, why has whiskey got a capital W and why can’t you spell bottles you dope?

    10
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