A former member of the Government-appointed refugee appeals authority has criticised the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, for failing to provide leadership on the refugee issue.
Mr Peter Finlay SC said yesterday it was disappointing in the extreme that the only utterance from the head of Government on the issue had been mention of the possibility of detention centres while on a visit to Australia. "Issues like this that have a very serious moral dimension really require leadership, and it is grossly unjust to thrust it all at the door of the courts," he said.
Irish people craved justice, as evidenced by the setting up of several tribunals, and they would do so on the refugee question also if given leadership, he added. Mr Finlay said the Government was concerned only with "battening down the hatches".
Mr Finlay, who resigned from the refugee appeals authority in January, said the Government must try to understand where most of those seeking asylum were coming from. He believed it was immaterial whether they were refugees or economic migrants. Some migrants went to enormous lengths and put themselves in grave danger to travel here. "Until we begin to understand who these people are and their determination and their motivation to get here, we will never solve the problem," he said. "It is not criminality that causes children to travel in the undercarriage of trucks across Europe but we respond to them as if they are criminals."
Mr Finlay stressed he was not calling for an open-door policy but the problem had to be faced responsibly. For this reason he has advocated granting an amnesty to those who have been waiting a long time to have their asylum applications processed, spelling out clearly the requirements for migration to Ireland of all nationalities thereafter.
He also criticised the rules on judicial review in the State as allowing sometimes spurious cases to come before the courts. He said they should be tightened up, but in an even-handed way, not in the manner proposed in the Illegal Immigrants (Trafficking) Bill which has been referred to the Supreme Court.