MINISTER FOR INTEGRATION Roderic O’Gorman has said the current international protection system in Ireland was built “for a different era” and no longer works.
Speaking at event on how to end Direct Provision earlier today, the minister’s comments came less than an hour before his department announced it had run out of accommodation for international protection seekers.
The Department of Integration said this afternoon that drop-in day services will be provided for international protection applicants who cannot be accommodated, with tents and sleeping bags provided where required.
O’Gorman said today that he is not comfortable with leaving people unaccommodated.
He said the system “as it stands is not meeting the challenge before it”.
“I do want to say it is in no way a reflection of the level of commitment of the officials in my department. And it’s certainly not why I took this role. It is not something that I can stand over, the fact that we’re not able to accommodate everybody.
“But it is a consequence of the extraordinary challenge that the state and in particular my department has faced over the last 20 months,” he said.
O’Gorman added that there was widespread recognition before this crisis that Direct Provision was not an appropriate or sufficient way to accommodate people.
“That was the case when we were trying to provide accommodation to 8,000 people in late 2021. It’s even more so the case now when we’re trying to accommodate 26,000 people and that number growing,” he said.
Experts speaking at the event today, hosted by the Children’s Rights Alliance, spoke of how other government departments, in particular the Department of Housing need to do more to support the work of the Department of Integration when it comes to providing accommodation.
Nick Henderson, the CEO of the Irish Refugee Council said he is concerned about civil servants in the Department of Integration being “burnt out and struggling” and whether there is the skill set in the Department to “take the work forward”.
Dr Catherine Day, former Secretary General of the European Commission and chair of the 2020 landmark report on ending Direct Provision said today that Ireland is not “full” as some argue.
She said instead that the deficiencies in the system are a policy choice made by the Government.
Speaking this morning, Dr Day said the state has a permanent responsibility to accommodate newly arrived asylum seekers and that it needs to accept that this is not a “temporary” phenomenon.
In 2020, the report authored by Dr Day recommended several significant changes to how Ireland treats people seeking international protection. Few of these recommendations have been acted on to date with the Department citing the influx of Ukranian refugees as a contributing factor for the lack of action.
Dr Day said today that although the world has changed since the 2020 recommendations and report, she still believes its findings are valid.
She argued that the state needs to be the provider of international protection accommodation and that it should not be outsourced to the private sector.
This was supported by the Minister, who said today that he knows it is “jarring” to be discussing how the system needs to be reformed at a time when the state is not able to provide accommodation for everyone currently.
“But I’m very much of the view that as of right now, where we see the current system failing, right now is absolutely the time where we should be recommitting ourselves to reforming the system,” O’Gorman said.
Dr Day said today that there is a clear lack of coordination between government departments and that there is a lack of priority at government level.
“I certainly think that meeting Ireland’s obligations to look after people who apply for international protection here is a cross-government responsibility. But the reality is, Minister O’Gorman and his officials are left on their own to cope with a situation that is overwhelming them,” she said.
She added: “They are making some progress… but they could achieve much more and much faster if they had what I would regard as the normal cooperation from different government departments”.
Day added that funding for Ireland’s International Protection system is also currently inadequate.
This view was shared by Nick Henderson, who said he cannot get his head around the “paltry” sum allocated for capital expenditure by the Government.
Dr Day also said the Government needs to do a lot more when it comes to tackling misinformation relating to those seeking international protection in Ireland.
She noted that the actual number of asylum seekers in Ireland is very small as a proportion of the total population of Ireland.
“We have the capacity to do it if we choose to do it. So I think we need to explain to our general public, that asylum seekers are not economic migrants, they’re in a particularly difficult situation. And they need help and support from our state until their cases have been finalised,” Day said.
Minister O’Gorman said today that he will bring the revised white paper, first authored by Dr Day, to Cabinet in the coming weeks.
He said it will outline the need for much more state-provided accommodation.
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