Irish human rights groups have warned that the State’s social protection policies are being undermined by mistakes made at the front line by civil servants.
The Equality and Rights Alliance (Era) said a forthcoming report will detail how immigrants routinely experience social exclusion due purely to mistakes made by deciding officers in the Department of Social Protection.
“We strongly believe that training is required for front-line civil servants, both in the application of the rules that they apply, and more generally in the principles of equality and human rights,” said Fiona Finn, CEO of Nasc, the Irish Immigrant Support Centre.
The groups call on Minister Joan Burton to “use the opportunity presented by her department’s Social Inclusion Forum to listen to feedback from people working on the front line”.
“Better still,” they added, “we hope that the minister will initiate reforms that would make her a leader in fulfilling the commitment made in the Programme for Government 2011, to ‘require all public bodies to take due note of equality and human rights in carrying out their functions’.”
Finn said her organisation strongly supports a recent proposal by the ERA that called for a “positive duty” in respect of equality and human rights to be introduced for the public service.
The forthcoming report will highlight the barriers faced by immigrants accessing social protection in Ireland. The study is based on a sample of the experiences of 54 immigrant applicants accessing social protection.
The details were supplied by six NGOs across the country, namely Crosscare, the Migrant Rights Centre Ireland, The Integration Centre, Doras Luimní, Longford Women‘s Link and Nasc.
A spokesperson for the Department of Social Protection commented: “We are not in a position to respond at the moment, not having seen the full report, but we will be happy to provide a response once we have had an opportunity to fully consider it.”
