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State found guilty of breaching homeless IP applicants’ rights but no sanction issued

Judge denies IHREC’s request for order forcing Government to establish system that vindicates the fundamental rights of all international protection applicants

The Irish Refugee Council says the judgment requires the State to 'radically improve' what is offered to the 2,352 without accommodation. Photograph: Alan Betson
Ellen O'Riordan's picture
Ellen O'Riordan
Fri Aug 02 2024 - 06:00

The High Court’s finding on Thursday that the State has breached homeless asylum seekers’ fundamental rights is significant but it engenders a sense of deja vu.

Since early last year, Ireland has been unable to provide shelter to all who arrive here seeking asylum, and the first legal challenge over the situation was ruled on 16 months ago.

In that decision, which came in cases brought by two males, the High Court said a €28 Dunnes Stores voucher and the addresses of private charities, given in lieu of State-provided shelter, “fell far short of what is required” by law.

The men’s inviolable right to human dignity was breached, the court held.

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The Minister had fought the case. There was no question of a failure or refusal to act, it said. Rather, it was struggling to cope with a large increase in asylum seeker applications alongside its commitments to Ukrainians arriving from their war-torn country.

Once judgment came, the State accepted its admonishment and did not seek to appeal.

When it was announced in December of last year that, once again, not all newly arrived men could be housed due to acute bed shortages, it took Ireland’s human rights watchdog just a few weeks to put together its legal papers and bring its first representative action.

In an echo of the earlier decision, Mr Justice Barry O’Donnell declared on Thursday that the State breached homeless international protection applicants’ rights to human dignity.

But he refused to accede to the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission’s (IHREC) other request, which was for an order forcing the Government to establish a system that vindicates the fundamental rights of all international protection applicants.

The judge said such a move seemed “not appropriate or necessary”, given the State was “actively endeavouring to achieve that objective”.

He pointed to the State’s efforts to improve the situation since the earlier ruling. Its defence to the commission’s case had been that it increased by €75 a weekly allowance to unaccommodated men and had established formal arrangements with charities that would provide food and hygiene services.

Although Mr Justice O’Donnell found “those efforts were not adequate”, they showed the State sought to respond to the court’s 2023 decision and “there is no suggestion that the State will not respond to this judgment”, he said.

The new measures were not sufficient to meet all basic needs, with the men having to make a choice between food, clothing and hygiene. The various day services were overwhelmed and the €113.80 weekly expenses payment was not enough to afford private hostel beds for more than a few nights, the judge held.

The State had submitted the changes were in line with other EU states’ offerings where accommodation could not be provided and ensured “calibration of offering” without incentivising Ireland as a place to apply for asylum.

The Irish Refugee Council has said the judgment requires the State to accommodate people and, in the interim, to “radically improve” what is offered to the 2,352 without accommodation.

With proposed new centres becoming the target of significant and sometimes volatile protests, it is not immediately clear how the State can bring itself into line.