We boast of our compassion, but have taken only one refugee child

Out of all the children who need to be relocated — children at risk, alone — Ireland has accepted one, writes Fergus Finlay

ONE child. That’s it. That’s the best that Ireland can do. One child.

Ireland calls itself civilised and modern, and we’re not above lecturing other nations on their responsibilities.

We tut tut a lot about the awful things that are happening in the world, about places like Aleppo, about the suffering of refugees.

We shudder at the images that sometimes appear — a little boy lying dead, face down in the sand; another little boy, dazed and confused, sitting in an ambulance.

If we could take them to our hearts, if we could protect them in our homes, we’d do it in a heartbeat. Because we can’t bear to see that suffering.

Except we don’t.

We’re not just civilised and modern.

Despite all our difficulties, we’re pretty comfortable, too.

We mightn’t be too keen on sharing our resources equally, but that doesn’t mean we’re short of resources.

Look at our roads, look at the marinas in harbours around the country, look at the masses of cranes suddenly all over the skylines of our cities again, as commercial and retail buildings start to bloom once more.

Look at the decent crop of current-year cars that you can see all around you. We can actually afford to help again.

Except we won’t.

Margaret Tuite is the EU Commission’s coordinator for the rights of the child.

I asked her, through Twitter, to send me data about how children were faring in the worst refugee crisis in modern times.

The information she sent me was staggering, and took a long time to absorb and comprehend.

But one fact stood out.

Out of all the thousands of children who need to be relocated — children at risk, children alone — Ireland has accepted one.

One child. I don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl. I don’t know his or her age. I don’t know his or her location, or his or her well-being.

All I know is that he or she is the only child from a war-torn, or hunger-torn, corner of the world that we have been able to accept.

There’s a group called Calais Kitchens. It’s a voluntary organisation, as far as I can tell, that has been doing its best to feed and protect the perhaps 1,500 children who lived in the ‘jungle’ encampment in Calais.

As the encampment was being dismantled the other night, one of their volunteers posted this on Facebook:

“It’s nearly 11pm. We … just finished serving dinner and water to 1,500 unaccompanied kids. The government promised to keep them accounted for. This, in their eyes, means letting them sleep in a container camp, a camp without running water, any access to food, anyone to look after them. This has fallen on us. To work from 7am until now, feeding them, watering them, and trying our hardest to keep them safe and out of trouble. I’m leaving them tonight, not feeling proud of how hard we worked, but unbelievably worried that something might happen to one of them. I can’t find the words to tell you how angry I am that this week of eviction and disorganised chaos has resulted in this situation. Tres bien France!!! and well done England for truly not giving a Shit.”

That volunteer didn’t mention us. I’m not quite sure why.

Right now, there’s an estimated 2,500 children in Greece alone. About one in six of them are under the age of 14. Some are simply locked up — more than half are still on a waiting list for shelter, because there’s just 1,000 shelter places available.

That’s just Greece. There are many thousands of more children, but let’s concentrate on Greece. As of the end of October, 75 of these children were relocated to different countries in Europe. Finland took 38, Spain 18, Luxembourg 9, Germany 4, Holland 3, Portugal 2.

And, as I mentioned earlier, Ireland took one.

Some children, of course, will never be relocated. So far this year, 145 children have died trying to get to a safer place. It will never matter whether we say no to them or not.

I keep thinking about Greece, because of it’s 2,500. That’s a tiny proportion of the total number of children, but it’s a manageable proportion. If we choose to think of it that way.

But every time I think about the number, I keep seeing a face. Oddly enough, it’s the face of my grand-daughter, Katie, a little girl who could charm starlings out of the trees. I find it unimaginable that if it were ever to happen that she found herself, through some terrible national tragedy, alone in the world, there’d be no country willing to take her in.

Because willing is the issue. There should be no pretence that we are not able.

Yes, it wouldn’t happen for nothing. We have hundreds of brilliant foster parents in Ireland, and many of them would be willing to take in a child who had been left alone, through war or oppression. It would cost money to recruit them, and money to support them. But a properly resourced, and managed, system would enable us to make a major contribution to addressing a global tragedy that is destroying the lives of a generation of children.

UNICEF have said that a refugee child is five times less likely to go to school that a non-refugee child. And when a refugee child does get to school, they are far more likely to be discriminated against than non-refugee children.

There are gangsters who are considering getting out of the drugs trade, because trafficking in children is much more lucrative.

Not just exploiting them to get away from danger or oppression, but selling them into the sex trade, heaping life-destroying trauma on top of life-destroying trauma.

OXFAM reports hundreds of children missing from the camps in Greece and Italy. They talk about the health and education needs of the children, and the particular needs of children who have witnessed terrible violence and often suffered violence themselves.

OXFAM, UNICEF, and many others are on the ground, in all the places that children are huddled. They know what’s happening today and what the long-term consequences are for children.

I know, from my day-to-day work, that the life of a child can be shaped for years by poverty, by parenting issues, by the presence of alcohol or violence in the home. But I cannot imagine what it must be like for a child who sees his or her parents killed before their eyes, or sees their entire family wiped out. Or what it must be like for a child who sees his or her village blown to pieces.

These are the children who sit and wait in camps around Europe, who hope against hope that someone, or some country, will take them in.

Right now, they wait, in the main, without any reason to hope. And the lack of hope is the thing that shapes the future most of all. In the wrong direction.

But at least, as we know, we’ve taken one.