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Direct Provision in an EU Context

Metro Eireann, January 2008

By Robin Hanan
Conditions in accommodation for asylum seekers vary greatly across Europe. A recent EU report notes that many countries, such as the UK, Sweden, Italy and Belgium, provide individual housing, while many now follow the Irish example of collective accommodation centres. In France, Italy, Spain and Slovenia, asylum seekers are subsidised in many cases to find their own accommodation.

Ireland, however, stands out in European terms for the absolute ban on anything which can be seen as encouraging asylum seekers to integration into Irish society. The Minister for Integration, Conor Lenihan TD, has been at pains to reiterate the traditional Department of Justice view that asylum seekers should not integrate into Irish society until they receive refugee status. But in most other EU countries, asylum seekers are encouraged to integrate from the point of arrival. In Portugal, for example, asylum seekers are given career guidance, educational support and self-catering facilities.

Ireland stands out most dramatically as the only EU country where there is an absolute ban on asylum seekers working or studying as adults, since the ‘right to work’ scheme was allowed to lapse in 2000. We are also one of the few places where most asylum seekers are not allowed to cook for themselves or their families. Anyone working closely with asylum seekers will know that these are among the main cause of depression and lack of hope in Irish direct provision centres, and among the main barriers to integration when they get refugee status.

Ireland’s position in refusing work to asylum seekers is becoming increasingly politically embarrassing on the European stage. Ireland and Denmark are the only two of the 27 European Union countries which have not ‘opted into’ the EU Reception Directive, which lays down the minimum conditions for asylum seekers and which provides that they must be allowed to work after a year of waiting for a decision, or sooner.
Many EU countries, like Greece, allow asylum seekers to work either straight away, or in less than the year required by the directive. This is true even where the rights of asylum seekers have been restricted due to a recent upsurge in racist politics. In Austria, for example, asylum seekers are allowed to work after three months waiting for a decision, and in the Netherlands after six months.

The same directive also gives asylum seekers “the right to free movement within the Member States in which they apply for asylum and to choose their residence”. It also provides that asylum seekers “are entitled to contact UNHCR, their legal advisers and NGOs”. The directive lays down minimum standards for training of staff in accommodation centres and provides for the rights of vulnerable groups to special housing, medical support, counselling and so on. These are areas where the Reception and Integration Agency (RIA) has a good record of trying to bring the system up to scratch but where, unlike most EU countries, we do not have specific rights-based legislation.

Our decision to opt out of the Reception Directive puts Ireland’s reputation as a humane country for asylum seekers under threat. Traditionally, Ireland justifies opting out of many EU asylum and migration laws because of the need to follow the UK and preserve our ‘Common Travel Area’ with them. In this case, since the UK has opted into the directive, it will be even harder to continue to argue that the rest of Europe is out of step with us. If the Government remains determined to continue this opt-out, it becomes ever more imperative to bring our legislation and practice at least in line with the rest of the EU and if possible ahead.

It is easy to forget that asylum seekers are in the care of the State while they are waiting for a decision on one of the most fundamental of international human rights – the right to asylum. There is no shortage of evidence that starting integration early, especially being allowed to work, is the key to integration of refugees and their contribution to Irish society when they eventually get status.

The forthcoming Immigration, Residency and Protection Bill provides an opportunity to change the psychologically and socially damaging prohibition on work and integration of asylum seekers before we become the odd ones out in Europe and to introduce rights-based legislation in line with the best practice across Europe.

Robin Hanan is CEO of the Irish Refugee Council