Sir, - I write in response to assertions attributed to a spokesman for the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform spokesperson in the report "Backlog mounts as 7,762 people seek asylum in 1999" by Nuala Haughey (The Irish Times, January 4th).
Listed among the "various factors" influencing people to come to Ireland are "the strong economy, attractive social welfare rates and the fact that the Minister had no deportation powers for most of the year due to a legal challenge".
Once again asylum-seekers are presented as people whose primary incentives in coming to Ireland are our generous policies and procedures the so-called "pull factors". No reference is made to the various wars, repressive regimes and generally intolerable situations that asylum-seekers are fleeing worldwide.
Furthermore, it must be pointed out that the vast majority of the world's refugees remain in the developing world. Western Europe, including Ireland, remains relatively untouched by global standards.
Some statistics may help to clarify the issue. There were (at the end of 1998) more than 21 million refugees and asylum seekers globally. Some 6.5 million were in Africa, 7.5 million were in Asia, while fewer than 1.5 million were in the EU, of which a mere 9,000 were in Ireland. Thus, even with the arrival of an extra 7,762 people this year, Ireland's proportion of the global refugee and asylum-seeker population remains infinitesimal.
Ireland's "refugee problem" should therefore be seen in the wider global context of increased war and repression, causing, as is its nature, more refugees and displaced persons worldwide, and not as a spin-off of the Celtic Tiger and our generous welfare system. - Yours, etc.,
John Daly, Chairperson, Irish Refugee Council, Lower Dominic Street, Dublin 1.