Immigration minister’s tweet in eight languages ‘escalated asylum crisis’
TD accuses Roderic O’Gorman of ‘advertising soft-touch policy’
A TD has accused Integration Minister Roderic O’Gorman of escalating the asylum crisis by ‘advertising Ireland’s soft-touch policies to the world’.
Independent TD Carol Nolan launched a scathing attack on the Green Party minister about a tweet he posted in February 2021 in eight different languages in which he highlighted the Government’s commitment to end the Direct Provision system and its plans to provide ‘own-door’ accommodation for asylum seekers.
But despite the Green Party’s vow to end Direct Provision, the Coalition has opened 79 new centres since the start of last year.
In response to parliamentary questions from Ms Nolan, Mr O’Gorman defended his 2021 tweet,
‘He told the world to come to Ireland’
which was issued in English, Irish, Albanian, Arabic, French, Georgian, Somali and Urdu.
The minister said: ‘These are the most common languages spoken by those who were residing in Direct Provision accommodation at that time.’
The minister also stressed that his use of the term ‘own-door’ accommodation was made in the context of ‘a White Paper to end Direct Provision and to establish a new International Protection Support Service’, which was published on February 26, 2021.
‘Own door in the context of the White Paper does not mean an applicant is given possession of a property,’ he said. ‘It means the property provided by the State for temporary habitation... has its own door into a family unit.’
Mr O’Gorman did not respond directly to the second section of Ms Nolan’s parliamentary question, in which she asked him to ‘outline the contribution’ his tweet made to ‘the numbers seeking asylum in Ireland in the intervening two years’.
Mr O’Gorman replied: ‘As the deputy will be aware, my department is responsible for the provision of accommodation to persons in the International Protection process.
‘All other matters relating to the asylum process, including statistics on the number of applicants applying, should be directed to Department of Justice.’
However, the Independent TD hit out at what she described as the Mr O’Gorman’s ‘patronising’ response to her questions.
The Laois-Offaly TD told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘Minister O’Gorman’s reply is disingenuous nonsense that completely fails to accept the role that he and his department played in advertising Ireland’s soft-touch immigration policies to the world.
‘He can say all he likes that he only tweeted in eight languages but his tweets in French alone would have been understood in about 29 countries, while Arabic is the official language in 22 countries. This is to say nothing of his department’s tweets in English, which is the dominant or second language in 67 territories around the world.’
She added: ‘Mr O’Gorman effectively told the world to “come to Ireland and we will give you own-door accommodation in four months”. Those departmental tweets in multiple languages were a major contributor to the overwhelming numbers we have seen in the last two years.’
A Fianna Fáil TD added: ‘People are sick of it, the virtue signalling. He is a one-man calamity.’
Mr O’Gorman said the Green Party ‘made a commitment in the Programme for Government to end the current system of accommodation for International Protection applicants and replace it with a new model that is based on a not-for-profit approach’.
But despite its pledge to end Direct Provision, the State has been forced to expand the system significantly over the past 14 months since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The war has forced over 66,000 Ukrainian refugees to flee to Ireland, with over 53,000 of those being accommodated by the State.
‘People are sick of it. He is a one-man calamity.’