PATFLANAGAN Protest at Dail not immigrant hotels
LAST autumn there was much anger and consternation among politicians as well as panellists on TV and radio because #irelandisfull was trending on Twitter.
The Government has now reluctantly conceded that’s true while admitting future asylum seekers and migrants will have to sleep on the streets.
This week we also had the incredible sight of the Minister of State for Integration Joe O’brien going on national television claiming the current situation with refugees is “unsustainable”.
“I’m not going to lie to you tonight, the nature of how we are accommodating people in terms of reception for people who are looking for protection is unsustainable,” he told RTE’S
Prime Time.
Where have you been hiding Joe, the ordinary people of towns and villages across the country could have told you that was the situation months ago.
Actually those who did were branded right wing bigots.
Under pressure from Miriam O’callagan the Minister said the country is now moving to a “different place” in terms of the accommodation the State can provide.
He said the plan, such as it is, is to build “rapid group housing on State land” and he also said there would be “rest centres” in the interim to deal with the increasing numbers of asylum seekers and migrants.
No doubt the 11,300 indigenous homeless men, women and children holed up in emergency accommodation, in some cases for years, might well ask why this type of modular home could not have been provided for them.
Unfortunately at best the number of those seeking international protection that can be housed in such accommodation is in the low thousands.
Yet Deputy O’brien has
stated the
Government should prepare for more than 80,000 further migrants to seek refuge in Ireland this year. If it’s unsustainable now, what will it be like then?
Going on his performance on Prime Time he hasn’t a clue where they are going to be accommodated.
Rather than face reality and admit the country cannot accept any more migrants and refugees, the Government is willing to repeat its previous mistakes.
Despite every available hotel, church hall or empty office building being crammed full of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants this administration is refusing to accept there is nowhere left to put them.
As with so many other aspects of life in Ireland, those who are charged with making decisions are out of touch with what’is happening on the streets.
The public have been way ahead of the curve because they have seen first hand the difficulties presented when large numbers of asylum seekers, mostly single men, are moved into their communities.
The recent violent disturbances at refugee reception centres in Citywest in Dublin and Killarney, Co Kerry, the latter involving up to 20 men, has heightened the publics’ fears that serious problems lie ahead.
They see the difficulties that uncontrolled migration has caused in Sweden, France and Germany and fear that Ireland could face a similar situation in the near future.
Those concerns have been heightened by the disclosure that almost 40% of those seeking asylum in Ireland, again mostly single men, in the first nine months of last year arrived through Dublin Airport without travel documents.
As anyone who has ever travelled on an airline knows, these would-be asylum seekers must have had travel documents otherwise they would not have been allowed to board a plane.
Do the public not have a right to ask why a genuine refugee would destroy their passport unless they wanted to hide their true identity and country of origin or, worse still, events in their past lives?
There is also the question of refugees and migrants being dumped in unsuitable accommodation in already disadvantaged working class areas.
I recently spoke to a man from Ballymun who claimed the local people are being scapegoated and labelled as racists for pointing out their community is unable to cope with an influx of asylum seekers.
He also pointed out that migrants are seldom directed to the more affluent areas of Dublin and other major cities.
Indeed Labour party leader Ivana Bacik has repeatedly pointed out that there are more than 400 empty beds in the former Jury’s hotel in Ballsbridge that could quickly be brought into use but that would involve housing migrants in the leafy Southside.
While the public might want to express their anger that tens of thousands of asylum seekers have been allowed into a country with a housing crisis it is unfair to protest at reception centres. The ones to blame are in Leinster House.
If the situation is now unsustainable as Minister O’brien claims, it’s because the Government made it
so.
As with so many aspects of life in Ireland those in charge are out of touch