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Accommodating asylum seekers

High Court has judged that the Irish Government is breaching asylum seekers’ human rights

Letters to the Editor. Illustration: Paul Scott
The Irish Times - Letters to the Editor.

Sir, – The image of this country as “Ireland of the Welcomes” has taken a battering in recent weeks.

There have been anti-immigration riots in Coolock, online misinformation spread by racist and neo-Nazi groups in the UK and US, threats against a distinguished immigration lawyer, and a High Court ruling that the State is failing to provide for the basic needs of homeless asylum seekers, leaving them “in a deeply vulnerable and frightening position that undermines their human dignity”.

Government figures have indicated that this judgment will lead to no immediate changes in policy (“State failing to meet asylum seekers’ needs”, August 2nd).

Meanwhile, the main Opposition party, Sinn Féin, has produced a populist policy paper which basically advocates moving the accommodation of asylum seekers from working class to middle class areas.

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I live in the middle class area of Rathmines/Ranelagh, where we have a hotel and four buildings owned by property developers housing several hundred asylum seekers. And there has been no trouble.

Volunteers leafleted the area to prevent anti-asylum seeker misinformation being circulated. Praise is due, in particular, for the small group of brilliant people – most of them women – who have almost single-handedly supported the homeless asylum seekers for whom there is no accommodation.

Cruelly and absurdly, the authorities arrange for tents to be handed out to these vulnerable people, and then keep moving them along and erecting high fences to prevent them from camping in small green areas.

I have seen the exhaustion, fear and hopelessness of these young men from poor and war-torn countries. As the son of a refugee who came to this country in 1948, it makes me ashamed to be Irish. – Yours, etc,

ANDY POLLAK,

Rathmines.

Sir, – As volunteers doing our best to support unaccommodated International Protection applicants in our country, we are staggered by the State’s inability to afford even the most basic protection.

On Wednesday last week, 11 men from Palestine and Jordan pitched tents on a bit of scrubland by the Dodder. After a few tense hours, in which they were subjected to abuse and threats by various passersby, gardaí arrived – at midnight – and forced them away from the area, resulting in a night spent on benches in the city centre.

The system in place at the International Protection Accommodation Services requires that the men be deemed homeless before accommodation can be issued.

On arrival in the country, they are issued with no more than a tent, but quickly find they are unable to pitch it anywhere. Not by the canal, where Waterways Ireland have installed a network of fences; not in parks, where wardens prevent them from coming; not in front of disused offices, where injunctions are taken out by the holding firms. Every square inch of the city has become unavailable to them, leaving them in an impossible situation.

The streets of Dublin are now extremely dangerous for unaccommodated people. Our group of volunteers has seen steadily intensifying threats, abuse and violence. Two weeks ago, rough sleepers by the Liffey were attacked by a gang brandishing knives and piping.

It is not a crime to seek asylum, but people seeking asylum are frequently the victims of violent crime. The perpetrators are rarely punished, while their victims continue to be dehumanised by being forced to sleep rough in unsanitary conditions.

The High Court has now judged that the Irish Government is breaching asylum seekers’ human rights. The small group of volunteers that has stepped into the moral and legal vacuum created by the State are calling for immediate action.

If the Government is unable or unwilling to immediately provide proper accommodation to people seeking asylum, the very least it must do is ensure a space to pitch a tent for a few days, a 24-hour police presence in the area and a 24-hour drop-in centre for food, warmth, safety and emergency accommodation referrals. – Yours, etc,

FRANK HOURICAN,

Dublin 4.