Joyce Fegan: Protests about refugees ring hauntingly hollow

There are currently 88 men living in tents in Clare in sub-zero temperatures. Picture: David Raleigh

I walk out my front door and there is no visible unrest, no obvious division, and no sign of discord. 

There are parents racing kids to school on foot, younger siblings traipsing downwind. 

There are retired couples and widowers out for their morning walk with friends. 

There are business owners opening their shop shutters. hoping for a good day’s trade. And there are commuters headed for the city, feeling like home time is an eternity away.

At the end of November, the media spotlight was turned on the town of Wicklow, a hotel in particular, home to people fleeing the kind of horror we will never know. 

There were to be protests about these refugees. 

The words 'direct provision' were a master stroke by the State in 2000, when the system to accommodate, process, and reject people seeking refuge was formally established. File picture: Larry Cummins

The upcoming protests were talked about on prime-time television, national radio shows, and in the newspapers. Free speech was important that week. 

A total of 30 people showed up at the social-media-organised protest. There are park runs with more participants that get far less attention.

As you scroll your screen or scan your newspaper right now, there are 88 men living in tents in Clare. 

Met Éireann has extended its latest weather warning, but these 88 men sleep and pass their day in tents in subzero conditions.

These men, eight per tent, with just their beds and their bags containing all their belongings, came to Ireland seeking protection from horror. Is this our céad míle fáilte in 2023? Why is no one protesting about this? Where is the media frenzy around this debacle? 

The words “ direct provision” were a master stroke by the State in 2000, when the system to accommodate, process, and reject people seeking refuge was formally established.

This very vague-sounding term doesn’t lend itself easily to placards and protests and social media posts.

In 2000, the State estimated that refugees would spend six months in direct provision — we now know many, many people have spent years languishing in limbo. Picture: Clare Keogh 

It’s as if the term itself, direct provision, secured our people’s apathy towards and blissful ignorance of a system that was anything but direct.

In 2000, the State estimated that refugees would spend six months in direct provision — we now know many, many people have spent years languishing in limbo, unable to return “home” and unable to work, learn or start a life here in Ireland. Trapped.

And many people have died in direct provision.

In January 2022, while we were all still mostly limited by restrictions of some kind, a report was published showing a total of 88 people had died in direct provision facilities. 

The story was based on figures from the International Protection Accommodation Service (IPAS), but only dating up to June 2021.

Their cause of death was unknown, because when the media go asking, the State line is always: “We do not comment on individual cases.”

When those figures were released, where was our speech, our attention, our protest?

Two months later, in March 2022, a lady known as Mama Paulina was found dead in a direct provision centre in Cork. 

Understood to have originally been from Zimbabwe, she was three years stuck in the system, awaiting an answer from our State about her future. 

She also worked for a cleaning company. It was her employer that alerted us to her circumstances. 

When she hadn’t shown up for work, they rang the centre. It is understood that this human being who came here for protection and the hope of a dignified life had been dead for a number of days before her body was discovered. There were no reports of foul play. She was remembered as someone who was “always fighting for the rights of others”.

I don’t remember any protestors out fighting for her rights.

There’s lots we’ve missed, lots that haven’t moved us to protest and debate on this issue.

On December 12, 2019, the Report on Direct Provision and the International Protection Application Process was published. It made 43 conclusions and recommendations.

Our very own Joint Committee on Justice and Equality’s report said direct provision was “not fit for purpose”.

We were probably busy with the Christmas shopping to worry too much or pay too much heed to this “not fit for purpose” institution affecting thousands in our State, to pick up a placard or call Joe Duffy.

And it wasn’t the first report that had largely fallen on deaf ears.

In 2015, Mr Justice Brian McMahon’s Working Group reported to Government identifying many problems and issues of concern with direct provision. The McMahon Report contained 173 recommendations for improvements to the system. 173. The year was 2015.

We must have been busy back then too.

Then we finally got our act together to abolish direct provision and create a more dignified asylum system. 

Activists and human rights groups here, the people who’d been tracking the “not fit for purpose” system for years, were given 2024 as the official end date, so next year.

But on January 3, 2023, Minister for Integration Roderic O'Gorman admitted it would be “very difficult” to end direct provision here by the end of 2024.

A quarter of a century this institution of asylum of ours has been in existence, and a promise of its rehabilitation rescinded, and there isn’t as much as a whimper of discord, not a sign of unrest.

For more than 20 years, the vast majority of us turned a blind eye to the plight of thousands upon thousands of people in our direct provision system.

Tomorrow, an open letter by the Far Right Observatory, signed by more than 100 human rights and community groups in this country will be published in this paper. 

Its title is “Turn off the Hate Megaphone”. It's addressed to the likes of TikTok, Meta (Facebook), Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube, and Telegram in Ireland.

It’s about how hate speech has been consistently reported to the owners of these platforms, and the consistent response has been: “This content complies with our community standards.”

In this community of Ireland, where we race our kids to school on half-eaten bowls of porridge, and give our friends a much-needed lift on that early morning walk, are we okay with 88 men living in tents in Clare in freezing conditions? 

Is the death of 88 humans who sought sanctuary here compliant with our community standards?

For more than 20 years, the vast majority of us turned a blind eye to the plight of thousands upon thousands of people in our direct provision system, to pick up megaphones of protest two decades later and call it free speech is a pot calling the kettle black.