Asylum reform to cut ruling waits to 6 months

The treatment of asylum seekers in Direct Provision centres will be compared to the Magdalene laundries in years to come, Equalities Minister Aodhán Ó Ríordáin has said.

Mr Ó Ríordáin, who has set up a working group to look at reforming the system, said he recognised hypocrisy in the relief which greeted US moves to legalise undocumented Irish immigrants there, and the treatment of people seeking to start new lives in Ireland.

He also said he would not be able to live on the €19.10 a week allowance given to adult asylum seekers.

Mr O Riordain, who has branded the current Direct Provision regime “inhumane”, insisted the Government would cut the waiting time for new asylum applicants to get a decision on their future to six months, after some people had to endure a limbo status for up to nine years in the past.

Asked if he believed that the treatment of people in Direct Provision would be looked back on in a few years and compared with the Magdalene laundries, he said: “I do actually, yeah. I know what inequality does to children. It’s pretty debilitating, and that it stays with you for life.”

Mr Ó Ríordáin stressed that the system needed to change.

“I do know many people in Direct Provision are very vulnerable,” he said. “I did meet one Afghani man in Wexford who was quite literally broken by the system.”

He warned that conditions vary across the centres where asylum seekers are housed, and said he would not want to stay the night in some of them.

“I have been in Direct Provision centres which are well run, where facilities are very good and where the people are treated with absolute respect and where I could see myself staying there for a period of time, and I have been in other ones where I wouldn’t stay the night,” he said.

Asked if he saw any hypocrisy in the way Ireland treats asylum seekers and the widespread welcome here for US moves to legalise undocumented Irish illegal immigrants in the US, Mr Ó Ríordáin said: “Yeah, I do. I have a sister in England and a brother in Canada. I think public opinion is in favour of change in the Direct Provision area.”

More than 4,000 people, including some 1,600 children, have spent four years on average living in Direct Provision in Ireland.

Mr Ó Ríordáin said the working group will deliver an interim report in the New Year, with final recommendations by Easter.

“The report will be robust and fair, and point us in the way of having a much more fair, dignified system,” he said.

“Catholic bishops are also among those to have called for urgent reform of the unjust systems that leave people seeking asylum at the margins of our communities.”