The Taoiseach's visit to an immigrant welfare centre in Australia has been superficially and skilfully misrepresented by the Opposition. Run by the Immigration and Multicultural Affairs Department of the Australian government, the centre provides language-training, counselling and job-placement services to assist people to integrate into Australian life. At no stage did the Taoiseach propose detention of asylum-seekers.

The reaction suggests that the Opposition is keener to turn this into a political football rather than engage in serious discussion on the real issue of asylum-seekers.

As a representative of a northside constituency in Dublin listening to last week's furore, I wondered where the debate left the people of a small number of working-class, disadvantaged communities who have been asked to make the greatest adjustment to asylum-seekers.

The facts clearly show that high numbers of people awaiting decisions on their entitlement to refugee status have come to live in a small number of communities.

An urgent issue now is to ensure that the challenge of reception and integration is fairly shared by all communities, working class, middle class and upper class, throughout Dublin and the State.

It would be unfair and wrong if communities which have been hammered in the past by poverty, social exclusion and disadvantage were left alone to manage the new issues and responsibilities which the growing asylum issue place on us all. Today, on International Day against Racism, I would like to set out what I see as the outline of a balanced, just and humane approach to addressing the asylum-seekers is sue. As I see it, there are four main cornerstones to such an approach:

First, it is in everyone's interest to speed up the time between a person applying for asylum and the decision being made as to that per son's entitlement to stay in Ireland in line with our international legal obligations under the UN Convention on Refugees.

Second, during the time when applications are being considered, the duty of care of asylum-seekers should be fairly and proportionally shared by all communities and regions. A good dispersal policy, whereby asylum-seekers are allocated Statewide supports, is a key to stopping intolerance and a climate of racism taking hold.

As the stock of private rented accommodation dries up on health boards under pressure of arrivals at the rate of 250 a week, I see no alternative but to offer accommodation and other services to asylum-seekers on a group basis in hostel-type centres countrywide.

Such measures in no way cut across provisions to allow asylum-seekers to work and make a contribution while their application for refugee status is being adjudicated as speedily as possible. Such centres could be called reception centres but they most certainly are not detention centres because people would have the right to come and go about their business.

Third, we need to be clearsighted about what follows a final decision on a person's application for asylum. When people are granted refugee status under the convention, we should give maximum help to integrate them into Irish life and their local communities.

We need to build on the experience we have gained to date so that refugees get top priority in terms of integration supports. But there are equally important issues on the other side too. In my view, if at the end of all the procedures refugee status under the UN convention is not granted, we also need humane and fair ways to help people return to their country of origin.

I think most Irish people would agree that we need to help people whose asylum applications have failed to have the basic wherewithal to get on with their lives. We could benefit from international experience in this area: once people are back home they would of course be free to apply to come back to Ireland under new skills-based immigration rules which will shortly come before Government.

Seeing our international obligation in this way will not sit well with those who want an open-door policy into Ireland and who deliberately confuse the notion of economic migrant and refugee with that objective in mind. The distinction between economic migrant and refugee is fundamental.

This confusion left unchallenged will wash away the foundations of the international refugee system which has been built up in Europe since the second World War. We need a scrupulous and speedy system to distinguish from spurious applications those of people who flee their countries due to well-founded fear of persecution on grounds of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a particular social group. Fourth, Ireland should continue to push hard for a meaningful international response to the growing and widespread problem of illegal immigration and trafficking in human beings which is feeding into the surge in asylum applications internationally. At EU level, further measures need to be taken to agree a coherent common strategy to asylum-seekers, immigration and visas, including political and economic initiatives.

The Opposition's bankruptcy in terms of a constructive policy is highlighted by the refusal of John Bruton on March 14th to reply to Sean O'Rourke on News at One when he asked him if he accepted that there was an accommodation crisis due to the arrival of 1,000 applicants a month. These are undeniable facts.

Despite the efforts of State agencies to advertise for accommodation to meet demand, standard accommodation is running short. We have an Opposition, it seems, which wants to oppose, to ignore the problem and to cast the racist slur when the Government gets on with addressing the real issues.

The report in yesterday's Irish Times that asylum-seekers are paying up to £5,000 a head to unscrupulous traffickers to take them to Ireland summed up the wide-ranging complex issues which are at the heart of the issue.

Coming at the end of the festival of St Patrick, it brought it home that the exploitation which Patrick knew as a boy at the hands of unscrupulous traders and criminals has not faded with time. The last days remind us that exile and deprivation are at the heart of the Irish experience. I believe this heritage is a key part of why we must move forward with a balanced, just and humane approach to the asylum issue in modern Ireland.