Fallout from Cabinet meeting sees shift in Government’s stance on refugees

A split at Cabinet is a staple of political coverage – but they can be overblown, contrived for political purposes, or subjective: one minister’s row is another’s spirited debate.

In the wake of this week’s Cabinet meeting, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said the reporting on the row that took place over migration policy was “much exaggerated”. Another Coalition figure texted an earthier dismissal in the days that followed: “There was no row, FFS.”

At least some at Cabinet disagree – one describing it during the week as among “the most divisive, heated discussions there has been” during the lifetime of this Government.

Whatever about the precise details, the fact it became public at all is the problem for the Coalition – and an indication of how frayed the question of how to accommodate refugees has become.

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Behind the scenes, officials have been working for weeks on a new approach. However, those plans have now sparked a heated row, and crystallised a reality which has been obvious for months: the system exists on a razor’s edge.

[ Taoiseach rejects claims he blindsided Tánaiste on plans for Ukrainian refugees ]

The trigger was a package of reforms on how to accommodate those fleeing the conflict in Ukraine – known as beneficiaries of temporary protection (or BoTPs, after the Temporary Protection Directive, which gives them rights in the European Union). Some 73,000 are accommodated here, alongside more than 20,000 refugees from elsewhere.

An EU decision to extend the directive for another year to March 2025 hammered home that key facts are not changing: the flow of people coming here from Ukraine is not slowing down, it shows no signs of doing so in the future and the system – designed on an emergency footing – is faltering.

On Tuesday, Minister for Integration Roderic O’Gorman was invited by Varadkar to update the Cabinet, and brief them on the nascent proposals. There was no Cabinet memo – the document that outlines a proposal and forms the bedrock of decisions – no formal agenda item and there was no decision sought. Afterwards, Ministers griped about the departure from procedure, suggesting that played a role in what followed.

This is true: this Government has been fastidious, ever since fractious exchanges over Covid in 2020, about tight processes governing what comes to Cabinet. On “all of Government” challenges, proposals are shaped within departments and by a senior officials group (SOG), attended by senior political aides. They then go to a Cabinet subcommittee, before being agreed by the three Coalition party leaders before Cabinet meetings. The result is that the political sting is taken out of contentious matters largely before they come to Cabinet. While chiefs of staff for the three party leaders were briefed on Monday afternoon, before the leaders’ meeting, there was confusion on Monday evening over whether a proposal would be brought to Cabinet, with contradictory briefings in advance of the meeting.

The Coalition now faces the accusation that it has done nowhere near enough work on a medium-term solution

At Cabinet, largely Fianna Fáil Ministers led by Tánaiste Micheál Martin raised a range of concerns about the proposed approach, the centrepiece of which is limiting State-provided accommodation for new arrivals to 90 days.

That the Tánaiste was not physically present for the pre-Cabinet leaders’ meeting likely compounded matters. He objected that it raised issues about the education of children, who would be in “welcome centres” during the 90-day period, and would ultimately make the accommodation problem part of the wider housing crisis. He said it was only dealing with one element of the response – critics later said his objections were “contradictory”.

O’Gorman, in turn, pushed back strongly, venting that there had been multiple Cabinet subcommittees discussing the issue at length, without any decision or outcome. In reality, while the manner in which it was presented to Cabinet was unconventional, that obscures a wider truth: O’Gorman had been working the channels for months. After numbers began to rise in the spring and into summer, he was trying to prepare the political ground for a tricky policy. He indicated to the three Coalition leaders in July that a change may be needed – a decision was put back until after the summer break. The most recent Cabinet subcommittee on October 12th (which the Tánaiste was not able to attend for the first time) was presented with a paper written by officials that judged the situation in stark terms: “unsustainable and unsuitable”.

O’Gorman’s department has been warning for months of bed shortfalls but has always managed to scramble and find more accommodation. The Coalition now faces the accusation that it has done nowhere near enough work on a medium-term solution. “The Government isn’t making the investment in the infrastructure that is needed not to be reliant on hotels and private capacity,” says Emma Lane-Spollen, national co-ordinator of Ukraine Civil Society Forum.

The fallout has seen a shift in stance. Both the Taoiseach and Tánaiste have spoken about ‘secondary movements’, pointing to a figure of 30 per cent as having registered for temporary protection elsewhere in the EU before coming here. While this figure is high, the Department of Justice has warned that it is “only indicative in nature” as data-collection methods may vary between member states and, more importantly, it would include people who were briefly registered in another country before travelling to Ireland. Either way, the Government now firmly believes ‘pull factors’ are drawing people to Ireland.

[ Accommodating Ukrainian refugees: how does Ireland compare? ]

There are an array of theories in Government around O’Gorman’s intent – nobody believes he ideologically wants to cut back. Some argue he was trying to shake Ministers into action; others believe the situation is so dire, and the system so close to collapse, that a drastic slashing of Ireland’s offering to refugees is needed to make coming here less attractive and in turn lower the numbers arriving. A source said O’Gorman is simply of the view that the “unlimited accommodation offer ... just isn’t sustainable any more”.

There is a broad consensus that reforms will come. Minister for Higher Education Simon Harris said on Thursday that “the status quo can’t continue”, and two separate Cabinet sources predicted a “combined outcome” or a “more complete proposal” soon. The Greens believe a new proposal could be tabled in the coming weeks. There is scepticism in Government that if a 90-day period came in, people would be effectively evicted at the end of it – there are already more than 5,000 people in direct provision with the right to leave who have not. The fear is that if it didn’t slow the numbers arriving, the absence of a medium-term solution and a hardened short-term stance could collide, with unpredictable consequences. Senior sources say that even if the numbers arriving were halved, it “still puts a lot of pressure on us”.

What might a new approach look like? A senior source said that at all stages, including before arrival, Ukrainians will be told about any new limits, about the housing crisis and that those who stay “will face those challenges in the same way everyone else does”. Minister for Social Protection Heather Humphreys has been asked to look at the welfare provision – said by sources to be the “key other measure” – although it’s understood that the department’s view is its role is largely limited to administering the payment rather than taking decisions directly. Incentivised returns – such as paying an air fare back to Ukraine – are not actively being considered but sources didn’t rule them out.

Much focus will come on the education offering following the Tánaiste’s intervention. It is understood that the Department of Education would resist anything that looked like “segregated schooling”, amid suggestions that education would be provided within welcome centres.

The more departments are embroiled in crises, the more their bread-and-butter policies can suffer – O’Gorman can attest to this, having seen the prospect of achieving his flagship proposal to end direct provision “demolished”, in the words of one Minister, due to the impact of the migrant accommodation crisis.

The most delicate element to the politics is the involvement of the Department of Housing – or more directly, the risk that guillotining the provision of accommodation for refugees would compound the wider housing and homelessness crisis – something explicitly called out by the Tánaiste at Cabinet on Tuesday.

So far, the Government’s response has managed to keep the emergency of migrant housing on a separate track to the chronic crisis in housing. The question now is whether the two can be kept from colliding in the months to come, as elections close in.