Joyce Fegan: Does the State only care about certain children?

Sofya Abashko, a student from Cork Educate Together Secondary School at the installation of a billboard at Lower Glanmire Road, Cork, saying that four more years of Direct Provision is too many. Picture: Denis Minihane

If we found out that a school or sports club or swimming pool had adults working there who had not been vetted to work with children, despite assurances to the contrary, I'm assuming there would be a bit of national uproar.

And if we found out that the children's parents were afraid to make complaints in the school or sports club or swimming pool for fear of the consequences, I'm assuming our initial uproar might double in size.

This week, those exact two truths emerged in Ireland, not in a school or pool or club however, but from a Direct Provision (DP) centre.

DP is where human beings, adults and children, are accommodated as they await to hear about their application for asylum in Ireland. Some people are waiting years. Babies are born there. And human rights activists describe DP as our next "mother and baby home" scandal.

The State pays private contractors to run these "centres", lots of different contractors all over Ireland, so each centre varies.

And, so far, Government records available up until 2017 show that since 2000 the total bill to contractors for the 17 years amounts to €1.1bn.

Imagine if even some of that €1.1bn had been used to assist these human beings in the rebuilding of their lives in Ireland — through education, medical or psychological support and job-seeking assistance

But that didn't happen and instead this week, we had yet another damning report about DP. This time it was from the Ombudsman for Children's Office (OCO).

These are the findings from one centre:

•  Staff members had not been vetted to work with children, despite assurances that this was the case.
•  There was also a failure to report a serious child protection concern, and parents were told— incorrectly — that their children could be removed by welfare services if they were not properly supervised.
• One parent also raised concerns about overcrowding, a lack of safe play areas for children, the nutritional content of the food, and poor communication by centre management about facilities and how to make a complaint. They were reluctant to take their complaint further for fear of reprisals.
• There were no interpretive services at the centre, meaning parents who may have wished to make a complaint, physically couldn't.

Just for one moment, abbreviations of State systems and bodies aside, imagine you have left your country to seek asylum elsewhere, your child's basic safety is still at risk in this new place and not only can you not flag this fact, you are afraid to flag it.

Would this situation be acceptable in a school, a pool or a sports club here?

"Since we have started accepting complaints from people living in DP, we have found a general reluctance to complain and a fear, on behalf of residents, that highlighting issues may impact on their status or their treatment while seeking asylum in Ireland," states the OCO report published this week.

But that's why people in DP don't speak up — for fear. And the culture of fear means that the lack of safeguards for children continue

Exactly who is winning here?

After investigating one centre, the Ombudsman for Children's Office decided to include all accommodation centres, specifically focusing on child protection.

"We could not assume that these issues were isolated to one centre," read the report this week.

What were the findings?

In a very definite and direct statement the Ombudsman for Children's Office said: "The DP of State provided accommodation to families seeking international protection does not have the best interests of children, or the protection and promotion of the human rights of child refugees at its core".

For a State ombudsman to say that a State system, albeit privately operated, does not have the best interests of children nor the promotion of human rights at its core, is quite the statement. The kind of statement that should stop us in our tracks and make us take action.

But, apparently, action is being taken and the current DP system is to be abolished by 2024 — a long, long time away, and probably an interminably long time away for the human beings, adult and children, who have languished in these centres for months, if not years.

This week I spoke to a woman who gave birth to her baby in hospital during the pandemic, while she had to leave her two children in her Direct Provision centre. She was a week away from them. Imagine the worry.

Recommendations

Back to abolishing the system. During Covid, we proved that the long arm of the State could take action, even with a caretaker government, at breakneck speed.

A previous report about the DP system, the McMahon report flagged many, many concerns and made many recommendations. This latest OCO report said that a key recommendation in that McMahon report, an independent complaints procedure, has never materialised.

When was the McMahon report published? June 2015. That's coming up on six years ago now. And we can't excuse our lack of action, by saying these things take time and money, because the establishment of an independent complaints procedure isn't exactly like building an apartment block.

What's your view on this issue?

You can tell us here

And just one other little report about DP that might have slipped through the cracks, that is specifically about money this time.

A spending review of DP, by the Department of Justice itself in 2019, found this: "This report found that commercially owned centres’ operational costs are approximately 44% more per person per day than State-owned centres".

But we still didn't do anything about that and instead continued to haemorrhage money on a system that is not fit for purpose and to quote a State watchdog, "does not have the best interests of children, or the protection and promotion of the human rights of child refugees at its core".

In 2019, direct provision accommodation costs increased by 66% — that's €51.4 million.

The State might argue that they didn't see the overspend coming and it was because of a rise in the number of people seeking asylum here, but please see your own spending review above.

Imagine again, that all this money that has gone into the hands of for-profit private operators had instead gone towards the rebuilding of lives.