Welfare system ‘failing some immigrants’
The “Person or Number” report, compiled by the Crosscare Migrant Project, Doras Luimní and the Cork-based Nasc Immigrant Support Centre, shows that some migrants believe they suffer discrimination and that immigrants sometimes seem to be unwelcome in welfare exchanges.
Many of the problems are based on the Habitual Residence Condition, with the “permanence” of an individual’s stay in Ireland and thereby their entitlement to benefits decided by a determining officer.
The report will be launched in Dublin tomorrow and features interviews with migrants, some of whom have been living in Ireland for a decade or more but who still fail the HRC and are refused benefits, including disability benefits. Many of the cases have led to an appeal.
In her foreword to the report, Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly stresses the need for the Department of Social protection “to monitor its own decisions” while Noeline Blackwell of the Free Legal Advice Centre, who will launch the report tomorrow, said that the “Irish social protection system is failing some immigrants”.
“Unfortunately, it is clear that immigrants are experiencing barriers that are both unfair and entirely avoidable,” the FLAC director said.
Those behind the report have urged Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton to implement the study’s recommendations, which are based on the experiences of 54 immigrant applicants accessing social protection.
In one of the report’s examples, Zach (not his real name), was refused social welfare benefits despite his living here for six years, the last 18 months of which were with an entitlement to work.
He has been living in a St Vincent De Paul hostel while attending a Fás course. The decision to refuse him Supplementary Welfare Allowance has meant he sometimes goes without food, according to Nasc, while he has been told that his appeal against the decision on his welfare entitlements could take six months or more.
Cork-based landscaper Karol, who arrived with his girlfriend Anna from Poland in 2005, said that his partner had been refused disability allowance in 2010 when she was diagnosed with a mental illness.
He said she was told that she was not entitled to any benefits here because she was born in Poland, even though she had worked here since 2005. Karol said he believed the payment had been denied because “they are afraid they would have to pay her for life”.
Karol’s working hours have been curtailed as he often has to care for Anna, although he can claim a supplementary allowance as he only works part-time.
