Sinn Féin has pledged to establish a new immigration agency that would oversee applications for those seeking international protection, and to cut by half the processing times for such applications.
On Thursday morning, Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald launched the party’s election immigration proposals, which doubled down on a pledge made this summer that new State-run accommodation centres would not be opened in working-class areas.
The party says it want to increase to 1,200 the number of staff processing asylum applications. There are currently around 500 staff doing so. Ms McDonald said this would allow the State to cut the length of time that applications take by half. As of last month, the median processing time for a determination was 85 weeks.
Sinn Féin has also pledged to end the €800 accommodation recognition payment paid out to families to host refugees from Ukraine. Under this plan, new applicants would not be able to join the scheme as the party says it “places other families and people seeking to rent private accommodation at a severe disadvantage”.
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The party also said it will explore the introduction of registration requirements for EU/EEA Swiss citizens to collect information. Sinn Féin TD Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire said that registration in an EU country is “quite common” and that it was “important that the information is there to understand the flows of people in and out of the country”. He said it was “worth exploring” to “ensure that you have adequate data to properly manage migration”.
Ms McDonald also said there should be “an orderly conclusion to the status of Ukraine under the temporary protection directive”, which is due to end in March 2026, a policy that Sinn Féin also originally floated over the summer.
Meanwhile, Ms McDonald said that if Sinn Féin enters government, in the first 100 days a minister of state for reunification would be appointed in the Department of Taoiseach, a green paper on reunification would be drafted, and a citizens’ assembly would be put together. Ms McDonald said conversations would then happen with the British government to discuss what the “tipping point” is for the holding of a Border poll.
At the same event, the Sinn Féin leader also condemned the candidacy of Gerard “The Monk” Hutch for the first time in the campaign. “I represent communities that have suffered because of this so-called gangland warfare. I represent communities that have suffered the ravages of the heroin epidemic in the 1980s. I roundly condemn Gerry Hutch, or anyone else who was involved in crime.”
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