Labour’s Costello calls for end to ‘direct provision’
The Labour Party’s spokesman for human rights says that Ireland’s long-term housing system for asylum seekers should be phased out as quickly as possible.
Joe Costello TD described ‘direct provision’ centres as a “prison for people”, and said asylum seekers should be allowed to work while they await the decision on their applications.
He also called for immigration authorities to process new applications submitted by asylum seekers within six months.
“It should be a mark of our civilisation, our country that we would ensure that people who come here seeking asylum be treated very fairly and very humanely and, at the present time, that’s not the case,” said Costello.
“Effectively, it ends up being a prison for people,” he said. “We can’t have a situation where people have been spending years in direct provision. We have to have a cut-off point. Anybody new going into the system should be coming out of it in a six- month period. That should be the norm.”
Costello has requested a Governmental review of the system, in which asylum seekers can live for years without the right to work while their applications are being processed.
However, the Government agency responsible for accommodating asylum seekers has responded that the system is equal to the best offered in the European Union and that no review is planned.
“The direct provision system delivers a high standard of service and value for money to the taxpayer through co-ordinated service delivery to asylum seekers,” said a spokesperson for the Reception and Integration Agency (RIA), a body under the aegis of the Department of Justice.
As of March, the RIA’s accommodation portfolio comprised 53 centres across 21 counties housing 6,358 people, representing 94 nationalities.
Costello pointed out that the number of people living in direct provision is nearly double Ireland’s prison population.
“We have to begin a proactive process of phasing out the process for the long term,” he said, adding that Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern has taken a “hard-line approach” to the situation of asylum seekers, but that a “rational, humane approach” is also possible – and necessary.
“A harsh and inhumane approach is ultimately damaging,” he said.
In his written request for a review of the system, Costello referred to illnesses arising from the stress of living in the direct provision system.
“Enforced idleness and dependence in regimented centres gives rise to mental and psychological problems and damages family life,” he wrote. “Also, people who don’t wish to be a burden on the State are forced by the State into just such a position. ”
Costello maintained that asylum seekers should have access to all necessary medical treatments.
“It should be a part of our policy that nobody should spend longer than six months” in the direct provision system, he stressed, adding that the centres are not “suitable for people to spend long periods in and are certainly not suitable for families to be there a long time”.
According to a study published in March by the African women’s network AkiDwA, 50 per cent of all direct provision residents are families. More than half of all residents have lived in the system for more than two years, and nearly a third for three years or more.
Adults living in the system receive a weekly welfare payment of €19.10 per week, while children receive €9.60.
Prior to 1999, asylum seekers in Ireland were privately accommodated and had access to employment.
