Asylum seekers should be given the right to work
This is fair enough, but one needs to consider the bigger picture of the many much-needed migrant workers currently making a living and paying taxes in Ireland.
If one looks at the top 10 nationalities who were granted permits to work in Ireland in 2001 and compares it with the top 10 nationalities of asylum seeker applications for the same year, six of the ten are common for each list Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Ukraine, Russia and South Africa.
Taking these nationalities together, they account for nearly 11,000 work permit holders, compared to only 2,720 asylum seeker applications of these same six nationalities combined for last year.
One can conclude that when taken in context, the numbers of asylum seekers are small and not worthy of media hype about being swamped or inundated with refugees.
My suggestion to the minister is to at least recognise that both asylum seekers and migrant workers are arriving from certain non-EEA countries, and he should come to an arrangement with his colleague in the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment whereby the asylum seekers of these nationalities be given the right to work if they so wish during the time their asylum application is being processed (which can be five months or longer).
As a result, they need not be subjected to the unfair and dysfunctional Direct Provision system.
Let the asylum seekers be given the right to work by means of the work permit system or otherwise it will help alleviate the current labour shortage, and it also means a significant number of asylum seekers will not have to rely on Direct Provision.
Noel Cosgrove,
Ballinaglough,
Glenville,
Co Cork
