Sir, – At a recent press conference, 30 NGOs issued a statement criticising the Government’s efforts to deal with asylum seeker accommodation. The meeting did not offer a solution but at enormous public expense the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC) is now pursuing a case against the State in the High Court from where, again, it is unlikely a solution to the crisis will emerge (“State cannot be accused of inaction over needs of asylum seekers, court told”, News, May 31st).
The reality is that the NGO community, in receipt annually of an estimated €6 billion of taxpayers’ money, has never accepted the fact that the accommodation issue can only be resolved if the asylum system is allowed to operate in full, using all of its constituent parts, including the deportation of failed asylum seekers and the return of people under the Dublin Regulation.
There are 30,000 people living in direct provision, namely State-funded accommodation. Within that number, there are around 6,000 individuals who have been granted leave to remain in Ireland with permission to work and to avail of their social welfare entitlements. They remain in State accommodation without a serious attempt being made to help them to leave and to prepare to take up their legal status as full Irish citizens.
Also living in State accommodation are up to 4,000 asylum applicants from safe countries of origin who are unlikely to be granted international protection.
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This leaves around 20,000 applicants from a variety of other countries, out of which, at most, only 50 per cent will be granted permission to remain in this country.
The bottom line is that the figures indicate that it is entirely possible that, over a reasonable period of time, many thousands of accommodation places will come on stream. However, this can only come about if all of those involved, the State and the NGOs, act collaboratively to protect the basic principles and the integrity of the asylum system rather than one side resorting to the courts with no clear objective in mind. – Yours, etc,
MARTIN McDONALD,
Terenure,
Dublin 12.