Our treatment of asylum seekers is the modern-day scandal we ignore

I HAVE a small girl who appears to be allergic to going to bed. Every night we make a deliberate visit to the kitchen for a last-minute snack but still she shouts from her room upstairs about how she is either hungry or thirsty.

You don’t need to be a parenting expert to recognise this as an obvious delaying tactic. She’s also, though, a very picky eater, and consumes her food far slower than the rest of the family. So there are some nights I reckon when she is being genuine about her hunger. It is hard to tell though.

I share this detail because I am reminded of the annoyingly sweet habits of my own little treasure, and how we as parents can choose to accommodate them or not, when thinking of those families who do not have these simple choices. These are the families who live in direct provision, a system which marked its 14th birthday last week.

The anniversary was no cause for celebration, except to mark another shameful year of the inhumane way which we have devised to treat asylum seekers. The same handful of people called for the system to be reformed, but in the usual way those calls were largely ignored. A media organisation featuring abuses at a puppy farm is far more likely to get an outraged reaction than the muted response there is when the living conditions of those people in direct provision centres is featured. At any rate the media have very restricted access to these centres, but it’s not like the viewers/listeners/readers are clamouring for more information.

I think of the children who have lived in these centres since they were born. They do not know what it is like for their parents to cook them a meal. Their school lunch can consist of one carton of juice and two slices of bread. They only know regimented meal times in a dining room, where there are the constant presence of security cameras and parents whose mental health is becoming increasingly fragile as a result of the conditions which they are in. These families are subject to rules where they are not allowed to keep food, but are cut off from access to food from 5.30 or 6pm, once they have finished their final meal of the day.

One of our most eminent citizens not so long ago compared the food restrictions to the operation of prisoner of war camps and said it was “not the type of approach that a civilised democratic western European country should apply in any situation”.

That quote came from Minister for Justice Alan Shatter, except it was uttered when he was the Fine Gael opposition spokesman on justice. As far as he was concerned that attitude applied whether it involved adults or children . “I cannot understand why a system such as that would be regarded as appropriate.”

Clearly opposition politicians have far more latitude in what they can say or criticise. But that “prisoner of war” statement is rather strong language. In any other situation, if it pertained to any other subject or group of people, the minister would be feeling strong political pressure for taking such an opposing stance when made minister. But for all the things that people have criticised minister Shatter for in recent times, very few would bother highlighting his flip flop on direct provision.

Asylum seekers are prohibited from working while their application is being processed. Adults receive €19.10 a week and for a child there is the princely sum of €9.60. Good God, what do these children get for birthdays or Christmas, indeed what do their parents do to keep them clothed? The system also provides health care through the medical card scheme, and education up to the age of 18. Asylum seekers are not entitled to any other form of welfare payment.

At the beginning of this year there were 4,360 people in direct provision. Of those there are 1,600 people who have spent five or more years in direct provision. Over 3,000 people have been in direct provision centres for two or more years. Imagine that, living in what is in effect an open prison, for over three years or five, let alone seven years, in a constant state of limbo, dealing with our deliberately complex asylum procedures, and with no control over your own destiny, not even that you have a biscuit and a cup of tea as you watch your last TV programme of the night before going to bed.

According to a report from the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), published earlier this year, among the problems experienced by asylum seekers were a lack of privacy, overcrowding, insufficient facilities such as homework/play areas for children and of course, limited autonomy, especially with regard to food.

Of course if these children who have been incarcerated so inhumanely in these centres for so long, grow up to have anti-social problems (how could they not?) their actions will be used as proof by those who seek it, that “these people” should not have been allowed to stay in Ireland.

Retired Supreme Court Judge Catherine McGuinness, patron of the Irish Refugee Council, so a woman very familiar with the system and the toll it takes on people, has called for us to get rid of the direct provision system. The Irish Association of Social Workers last week added their voice to the calls for its end, saying they want alternative accommodation for the asylum seekers living in direct provision, a third of which are children.

As minister, Mr Shatter has changed his line on direct provision very considerably. The direct provision system “is not ideal but it is a system which facilitates the State providing a roof over the head of those seeking asylum or seeking other grounds to be allowed, on humanitarian grounds, to stay in the State”.

No government, he said, could afford to ignore the likely consequences of any change to the direct provision system. If we were to introduce a system which facilitated asylum seekers in living independent lives in individual housing with social welfare support and payments, “the cost to the exchequer would be double what is currently paid under the direct provision system”.

It shows how “effective” a system we have, and what a success we have made of ensuring that we have far more of a “push” than a “pull” factor, that there has been a decline in the number of those applying for asylum arriving in Ireland, from 11,600 in 2002 to 1,000 in 2012. Obviously the economic downturn contributed to the decline.

It’s worth noting that there are big winners in this and they are the private entities who run the accommodation centres under contract to the State. It may be a horrible system to live within but it is one that is really rather lucrative to operate – in 2012 over €60 million was paid to the operators of the centres.

It’s almost a cliché to wonder how we, as a society, have lived through the industrial school scandals, similarly the Magdalen laundries, and been outraged to discover what happened in the past in these places. Yet the direct provision centres, and the manner in which the asylum system treats people without dignity or respect, is the living, breathing, modern day scandal we choose to ignore.