Refugee body fears growth of 'underclass'

There is a real risk that a new underclass will develop if the "short-sighted" current policies on asylum-seekers and refugees are not changed, the Irish Refugee Council has warned.

In its end-of-year review the council argues that the fact that asylum-seekers are not allowed take up paid employment, and are accommodated in direct-provision-type housing, in addition to the continued failure to establish a refugee advisory board and the lack of monitoring at ports are examples of short-sighted policies that will have a "long-term cost".

According to figures published in the review some 7,553 people applied for asylum here in the first 11 months of the year, with a backlog of 7,204 unprocessed cases.

Of these, 4,682 are new claims, the rest being appeals.

The top five countries from which asylum applicants came, up to the end of November, were Nigeria (2,979 or 39.4 per cent), Romania (769 or 10.2 per cent), Democratic Republic of the Congo (241 or 3.2 per cent), Moldova (226 or 3 per cent) and the Czech Republic (195 or 2.4 per cent).

Just 1,104 asylum-seekers were granted refugee status in the first 11 months, compared with 1,990 in the whole of 2002. Some 70 per cent of those granted asylum were successful on appeal, that is, they had been initially refused.

The council's figures show that 5,994 asylum-seekers live in 58 direct-provision accommodation centres. Under direct provision they are provided with bed and board and a weekly allowance of €19.10 for adults and €9.60 for children.

Writing in the review, the chief executive of the council, Mr Peter O'Mahony, warns of a "real risk that a new underclass will develop that is resented by others in the community and that is resentful of its exclusion from mainstream society.

"Over time this runs the real risk of festering, and the short-sighted current policies that ultimately lead to social exclusion will have a long-term cost."

He says the lack of routine contact between Irish people and asylum-seekers and the superficiality of much of the media coverage of asylum issues allow a perception to develop that the majority are spongers and wrong-doers.

"Nothing militates against the integration of refugees and asylum-seekers in Ireland as much as the Government's policy that prevents all asylum-seekers taking up paid employment," Mr O'Mahony writes.

This is despite the fact that groups such as the Congress of Trade Unions, IBEC and the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed have called for asylum-seekers to be allowed work if waiting longer than six months for a decision on their asylum claim, he notes.

The council is highly critical of a number of Government actions and apparent inaction in crucial areas of policy. A key issue during the year has been "the failure to deliver on the commitment in the Refugee Act, 1996, to set up the refugee advisory board with meaningful representation from civil society".

Although the Government was granted funds by the European Commission three years ago to establish a human rights monitoring presence at Dublin Airport, "this was returned unspent because of the unwillingness of the Irish authorities to give the project approval to operate," says the council.

Mr O'Mahony concludes that the asylum system is expensive and wasteful. This disguises a reality, he says, "that it simultaneously impoverishes a large number of people whose potential to Irish society is shamefully unexploited".