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THE GOVERNMENT HAS said Direct Provision is not fit for purpose and should be replaced following the publication of a landmark report today on ending the controversial system.
An Advisory Group, chaired by former Secretary General of the European Commission Dr Catherine Day, has made a number of sweeping recommendations in its report, including a once-off grant to people who have lived in the current system for more than two years. It also recommends increasing access to the labour market and own-door accommodation.
Direct Provision was set up in 1999 in response to a sharp increase in the number of people seeking asylum in Ireland.
The system has been repeatedly criticised by migrant rights groups due to the length of time people remain in centres while their asylum applications or appeals are processed, the conditions of centres as well as the psychological effects on those living in these centres.
Over €1 billion has been paid to private contractors and businesses since the system was established.
Dr Day said today the current Direct Provision system is “reactive” and said that people living in the system “bear the consequences” of its failures.
“A whole-of-government approach” is needed to replace the system, she said, adding that “continued political oversight” was required to implement the new system.
Day’s report recommends that any person who has been living in Direct Provision for more than two years be granted leave-to-remain for a period of five years – pending security vetting.
There should be an option to renew this under a once-off case-processing approach which should be put in place by January in order to clear the current backlog of asylum applications.
Leave-to-remain is granted to people who have been refused refugee or subsidiary protection but are not deported for humanitarian or other reasons.
Whole-of-government approach
Today’s report was commissioned by former Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan. The Advisory Group first convened in November 2019 and presented its findings to Government in recent days.
It was drawn up in consultation with a number of NGOs, including Nasc, the Irish Refugee Council and Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland (MASI) as well as current and retired senior civil servants.
Quick thread on what we can expect from the Day Report on Direct Provision which will be launched this afternoon.https://t.co/c5KdJs2P1z
— Cónal Thomas (@ConalThomas) October 21, 2020
The current system of accommodating asylum seekers should be ended and replaced by a three-stage system of State-run accommodation by mid-2023, the report says.
The new reception system outlined in the Advisory Group’s report would see accommodation provided to people at State-owned centres for three months, according to the report.
On-site services should also be available at this stage to assist applicants in accessing services such as health and social welfare.
After three months at a reception centre, applicants should be helped to move to own-door accommodation through a housing allowance model.
Dr Day said today that a “mix of housing solutions” should be found and recommended that “for at least some time” the Housing Assistance Payment should be expanded to include asylum seekers.
“We are not asking for any privilege for asylum seekers, there is no jumping up the housing list or anything else,” she said, after concerns were raised as to the impact such a move could have on the housing crisis.
“What we have a system that was designed to be temporary. But for some people it has gone on for years and years and years,” she said. “We need to be aware of the implications of living a long time in [Direct Provision].”
A payment similar to the Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) would also be made available as well as a weekly allowance under this new system, the report recommends, as well as a number of other key recommendation which can be read here.
It is estimated that the new system would cost €35 million less than was paid to administer Direct Provision in 2019.
‘Keyboard warriors’
Speaking this afternoon, Minister Roderic O’Gorman said any new asylum system will take time to implement and said it was “important that we immediately begin to create a more humane system, rooted in human rights.”
O’Gorman confirmed that vulnerability assessments for asylum seekers will be introduced by the end of the year, following the report’s publication, and that the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) will carry out inspections of Direct Provision centres around the country starting next year - a key recommendation of the report.
The Day report, which is not legally-binding, will now inform the Government’s White Paper for replacing the controversial system of accommodating asylum seekers in Ireland, which is due to be published by January.
Responsibility for administering Direct Provision accommodation transferred last week from the Department of Justice & Equality to the Department of Children & Youth Affairs, as part of an agreement under the Programme For Government.
The report and its recommendations will now be considered by a committee overseeing the drafting of the White Paper.
Said O’Gorman: “To address the homelessness crisis, we have a very ambitious target of 30,000 social houses to be provided across the lifetime of the government and we saw the first steps towards that taking the budget, to deliver 9000 of social houses from next year.”
“We will be setting out, how we achieve the various steps within the sphere of direct provision, within the white paper and the timelines we’ll need to add to deliver that, we don’t minimise the scale of the challenge here but, we have set it as an objective within the programme for government and the government is fully committed to delivering on that objective.”
In response to concern regarding opposition to Direct Provision centres in Ireland and the rise of the far-right, O’Gorman said that improved community engagement and “open communication” should help counteract opposition from “the far-right and keyboard warriors”.
Justice Minister Helen McEntee said this afternoon that violent behaviour “is never acceptable, whether it’s from a far-right group, whether it’s a group opposed to Direct Provision…and as a society we need to make that very clearly.”
‘Significant’
NGOs and migrant rights groups have broadly welcomed today’s report.
“The significance of this report cannot be understated,” Fiona Finn, CEO of Nasc said.
“Twenty years after the introduction of Direct Provision, a government-commissioned independent report has called for an end to Direct Provision and charted a pathway for the State to provide a protection and reception system for international protection applicants with the needs of applicants at its heart.”
The Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland (MASI) said that “while the report makes groundbreaking recommendations such as recommending the provision of housing, healthcare, and welfare payments to asylum seekers who do not stay in reception centres… there are some areas that need further consideration in the report.”
MASI spokesman Bulelani Mfaco raised concerns that asylum seekers could be open to discrimination under a HAP housing model.
While it has welcomed a 6-month statutory timeframe for processing asylum claims, MASI said this is unhelpful without consequences or benefit for an asylum seeker “if and when the State fails to meet this deadline”.
MASI called on the Irish State to match this with a legislative provision for the granting of permission to remain to any applicant who has not received a final decision on their asylum claim within 18 months from the date they lodged their application.
It says it would end the legal limbo facing many asylum seekers and ensure that no asylum seeker spends years waiting for a decision in future.
“The alternative to Direct Provision must truly mark a departure from the horrors of the past two decades. This must be reflected in the White Paper that will be published before the end of this year to set out a new policy on reception conditions for asylum seekers in Ireland,” Mfaco said.
Amnesty International, meanwhile, said it welcomed the expert group’s recommendations but said “this is just the beginning”.
“At this stage, we will need detailed implementation plans with ironclad commitments and timelines that will outlast any shifts in the political landscape,” Amnesty said in a statement.
“The pandemic has also forced government to confront the brutal reality of Direct Provision’s accommodation system. So, the practical recommendations in this report such as own-door accommodation, as well as housing people in areas where they can actually access employment and education, will have profound impacts on people’s lives.”
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One of the issues with overhauling the DP system is the lobbying by those benefiting financially from the DP system to keep it.
It’s a big money spinner.
@Padraic O Sullivan: huge, an industry in and of itself, one man’s misfortune is another man’s gain, all done under the guise of “humanitarianism”….
@Kate Flaherty: who do you think will pay for the apartments or houses they are put into? Do you think that will be cheaper?
@Padraic O Sullivan: exactly, like too many state subbie contracting to privateer/ profiteers.
My view is that asylum seekers need to be assigned by judges to specific social welfare & local authority task groups for housing, healthcare,education,& employment,whilst the legal assessment meanders on.
I reckon that genuine asylum seekers would jump at the opportunity to do local authority work,in neglected street/drain cleaning, park& beach maintenance, tidy towns work, etc, etc.
Community employment schemes where they are accomomodated.
Some may go offside, so normal legal processes will ensue, but the majority will respond to a more humane treatment.
The concentration camps must be closed, & also the legal imposition of licenced slave labour in factories.
@Padraic O Sullivan: What lobbying are you aware of? I have seen no reports of the industry lobbying to keep it.
@William Kelly:
You were making sense until the usual rant about concentrations camps and slave labour.
It’s an insult to the people who endured those.
Where and they going to put all these people we can’t house our own people and how many are bogus I’d say a lot of them
@high ho silver: We can house our own, it is a deliberate choice not to provide viable options for people. Punching down will not resolve either issue.
@Felicity Hensen: hiw many families homeless again? And you say we can house everyone
@Nowa Huta: we can, we choose not too. We have plenty of empty properties, plenty of land and many billions that can be summoned up in budgets when it’s needed – we just never bothered to summon it up to house people.
That was always a government decision – blame them if you’re looking for a scapegoat
@high ho silver: You need to vote for policies which will provide public housing in preference to the drip feed from private enterprise.
There is ample landbank to solve our housing, it just needs focussed state & local authority priority.Capital is also available via housing bonds to credit unions which have huge funds on minus interest with our buccaneer banking system.The building resource will build public housing if planning approval for private schemes is limited.
The planning system needs to be amended by our Dail to rebalance the approvals to a majority of public housing, & less speculative building for profit.
It just requires your vote to change it.
@Nowa Huta: You appear to be ignoring the very important question: why are people experiencing homelessness? It is not because of a lack of resources.
@high ho silver: well you’re right. We have a housing problem first and foremost. We simply wouldn’t have a DP problem if that were solved and we won’t solve one without the other.
We need to stop making developers rich and instead house our population. Asylum seekers will require only a very small percentage of the overall housing need. So please please please stop voting FF/FG or this will never be fixed.
So if we have concerns over scammers coming here from countries that are deemed SAFE and most con here from other safe countries as most of the claims are from countries that have NO DIRECT flights from there to here and the nevee ending pricey appeals and we are deemed as “far right” hahahaha….that’s laughable…talj about trying to dampen down free speech and legit concerns
It would appear that some asylum seekers are economic refugees I would replace the present system with a green card type of system that would free up space for genuine refugees
@Richard Russell: We actually have a very open system for access to the Irish labour market. A green card would solve little. Any such initiative has to be linked to our labour market needs new already have a system of permits which allows generous access to non-EU nationals.
Will the journal do a Q&A/article on these NGO who funds them etc? As for this far right crap it is bandied about way to easily just like the race card being used.
The reason the majority of these Asylum seekers are still in DP, Is they did not like the decision from the RAT so you have appeal after appeal again the legal industry is making a fortune.
When you look at asylum seekers in some countries they have it good here they have a roof over their heads a bed to sleep in and food to eat not like our homeless
@Pauline Cahill: Ireland , like other EU countries provide the same minimum provisions such as shelter , free access to medical and legal services and limited access to employment . These obligations are set out in EU legislation
@Pauline Cahill: Ireland , like other EU countries provide the same minimum provisions such as shelter , free access to medical and legal services and limited access to employment . These obligations are set out in EU legislation .
What countries do you refer to ?
Rejected asylum seekers who remain indefinitely are now organised and pushing the agenda. Aided and abetted by people who always have their own agenda – law, property, careers etc.
The money which is spent on the system would assist much more true hardship in the border camps where people who want to return home stay.
Any old sob story and enough money to pay the lawyers and you will never have to leave.
I know a case where the guy is a millionaire and is playing along the system – getting every benefit he can for himself and family and saying he has to put up with it – in order to get a European passport.
@John Lynch: if you know a guy with a lot of financial resources playing the social welfare system , why haven’t you reported him to the Department of Social Welfare and the Gardai for welfare fraud , the Department of social Protection are very keen and do investigate such allegations
Report them if you are that sure of yourself
Be honest , you know no millionaire .
@John Lynch: so a millionaire non European , claiming welfare , and yet to get a “European passport” (presumably Irish) Lol. It will be extremely difficult for that non European person to get an Irish passport if they are on welfare for a long time . They won’t be able to get a passport of another EU country if they ain’t living in those nations either
@Christy Dolan:
Did I say welfare? “Asylum” from a diamond rich country. And he was’nt a diamond digger.
have your say