I move:
That Seanad Éireann expresses its concern at the continuing difficulties being experienced by asylum seekers and refugees in this country and requests the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform to give an explanation of this situation to the House, to give a full account of the operation of the Refugee Act, 1996, and to explain why this Act, properly passed by both Houses of the Oireachtas, has yet to be fully implemented.
The way in which this matter has been approached and the short notice given to us to prepare for this motion is unsatisfactory. However, we have done better than the Government side which has not been able to produce a Minister who deals with the issue of refugees.
The Government has a cheek to invite refugees from Yugoslavia, given the way in which refugees already in the country are being treated. I suggest that the wording of the amendment does not flow from Members on the Government side but from the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform over whom the motion was shot. The wording of the amendment is laughable and I defy Fianna Fáil Members to troop through the division lobbies with anything other than a scowl of shame on their faces to push through the amendment. This will mean that they are not concerned about the refugees because the amendment proposes to delete everything after the word "that". This removes any scintilla of concern for refugees. Included instead is a form of wording which is an offence to this House. It suggests that we acknowledge all the wonderful work the Minister has done in this area. We cannot possibly do this with a clear conscience. The amendment suggests that Seanad Éireann supports the Minister's policy to ensure that every non-national who is genuinely in need of protection is identified and recognised. This is not happening. The attempt to table this amendment is an absolute disgrace on the part of a group of anonymous people who do not have to answer to anyone.
I call on Fianna Fáil to show that they have not entirely lost their sense of honour and not to act as lackeys for civil servants. The Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform is the most regressive and least progressive Department. It has done everything possible to frustrate the will of the Oireachtas, which passed the Refugee Bill in 1996. Everything possible has been done to neuter, delay, frustrate and sabotage the Bill. I would like to know what is happening to the Donegan case which is being used as an excuse to prevent the full implementation of the Refugee Act. Why has this case not got to the courts? I would like to see something done about this.
The record of the Department stretches back long before the involvement of the present staff. The miserable and disgraceful record of xenophobia in the Department goes back to the 1930s. It did everything it could in a neurotic way to exclude people who most certainly were refugees. I heard on the radio this morning the story of a woman, Sophie, from Central Africa. She had lived in circumstances of some prosperity. Her husband was taken from her and butchered. When her house was attacked her four children ran away. She was repeatedly raped and left unconscious. She managed to extricate herself, went to a refugee camp and ultimately arrived in Ireland. After two years, she has been refused refugee status. This is the type of thing which is covered by this anodyne and lying amendment. We must ask why these people are frustrating the will of the Oireachtas, and whether it is legal and constitutional. The Oireachtas has spoken and the Refugee Act has been placed on the Statute Book, yet it is not being implemented, particularly in terms of the criteria for the establishment of adjudication personnel to look into the question of assessing the status of refugees. That has not been done and the will of the Oireachtas has been abrogated by these people. For that reason, I call on the Government to withdraw its amendment to the motion and join us in calling for the full implementation of the Refugee Act, 1996.
This is not an odd outburst on my part. I am a member of the Church of Ireland and they are usually a fairly mealy-mouthed bunch. However, this Easter the Archbishop of Dublin, the Most Reverend Dr. Empey had this to say, in a sermon in Christchurch Cathedral:
It is very difficult to see the Risen Christ in the abominable attitude of the Government in its treatment of refugees and asylum seekers. There is little evidence there of God's love for all people. It is ironic that Christ Himself in the flesh was a refugee and would be in danger today of being deported to His own country but then, of course, He taught us that if we do this to any of His people we do it to Him. One sign of faith in all this has been the brave initiative of the Lord Mayor of Dublin [who is a Member of this House] in attempting to bring more understanding of the situation regarding refugees to the notice of people in this city. It is sad to note that because of his Christian witness he has been subject to hate mail that revealed the ugly face of racism in elements of our society. Obviously, such people have turned their backs on the Risen Christ. On the issue of refugees, at least, the Churches have put the claims of the Gospel to those in a position to improve the situation for asylum seekers.
This was angrily rejected from behind the barricades in the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform. At around the same time there were a few other worrying things. Can all these signals be wrong? I refer to a report in The Irish Times of 12 April 1999 on the annual general meeting of the Irish Medical Organisation, which carried the headline “Asylum-seeker legislation 'unethical”'. This is the rubbish that Fianna Fáil is standing behind. This is what is implied in the Government's amendment. I am certain that my decent friends in Fianna Fáil have not read it. They do not know what it is about and I am asking them not to vote in favour of it. The Irish Times report stated:
Attempts to introduce legislation obliging doctors to notify the Department of Justice of asylum-seekers who do not have appropriate documentation were rejected at the conference.
It is a Gestapo-like technique. Are we to expect the humane profession of medicine to act as informer against people who are driven and buffeted by the winds of chance to the shores of this once hospitable island?
The newspaper report continued
A Cork GP, Dr. Mary Favier, said this would require doctors to become "quasi-immigration" officials, having to check the papers of an illegal before providing them with medical care. "This is unethical and unacceptable", she said.
This was stated at a medical conference and it is what the Government side is supporting.
The report in The Irish Times pointed out that “Similar legislation was proposed in the US in the 1980s”. What happened? Our good Fianna Fáil people were over there lobbying against it, saying it was wrong, immoral and anti-democratic. If it was anti-democratic in America it is twice as anti-democratic here, ten or 20 years later. The Government should be ashamed to table that amendment. I excuse Senators on the Government side only because they did not write it. They had the opportunity to show they had a bit of guts. They should either get the out of here and not vote, and let us win the vote, or withdraw the amendment.
The Irish Times report continued:
A motion was passed calling on the IMO to reject the Immigration Bill currently going through the Dáil. Dr. Favier said plans by the Minister for Justice. Mr. O'Donoghue, to amend the Aliens Act attempted to criminalise and deport aliens and made doctors "a part of that process". Dr. James Molloy, a Limerick GP, said the proposal could cause conflict in the doctor-patient relationship. "This legislation is racist and, in my opinion, contrary to human rights".
That is one aspect – medical treatment, a fundamental basis of human rights. What are the other aspects? Let us look, for example, at the right to education that the Irish people have claimed for themselves. The Irish Times of Tuesday, 6 April 1999, reported:
Department of Education officials were told by the Department of Justice's immigration section that asylum-seekers should not have access to education.
We are not going to allow them to have medial care or education. I know that some weasel words will be used to get round this and pretend that it did not happen but, of course, it did happen. Why are so many signs coming out? If these are all mistakes then taken together they constitute one coincidentally huge mistake.
The same report in The Irish Times continued:
Writing to the City of Dublin VEC last month, a senior Department of Education official noted that the advice from the immigration section of the Department of Justice was that asylum-seekers "are not supposed to work, [That is wrong for a start. It is a rotten lousy thing to do to people who are defenceless. It leaves them open to the accusation of being shiftless and unwilling to work. That is what the Department is at. It is trying to pare down the figures as hard as it can by every unjust and inhuman method.] and I have been told, but not in writing, that they should not have access to education". [That is an official departmental note, although it is a note of a telephone conversation because they did not have the guts to put in writing.] The letter accompanied an "information note" sent to school and college principals in the Dublin area, instructing them that asylum-seekers must pay more than £2,000 a year to take Post Leaving Certificate courses.
To summarise the information note, it said they must pay the full amount. In other words, it is the kind of money we bleed out of wealthy South Africans, Arabs and Americans. Where will refugees get £2,000 a year? The newspaper report continued:
Senior Department of Education officials are known to be concerned about this issue. They have been active recently in helping refugees and asylum-seekers with their education needs, appointing special teachers to primary schools with high numbers of refugee pupils, and moving quickly to fund a special unit , based at TCD, to oversee adult refugee language training. The president of the Teachers' Union of Ireland, Mr. Joe Carolan, said that forcing asylum-seekers to pay exorbitant fees was unacceptable and discriminatory and would be the subject of an emergency motion at this week's annual congress of the TUI.
According to a survey published in The Irish Times on 27 April 1999, some 80 per cent of asylum-seekers are graduates. The survey may be vitiated slightly by the fact that the sample on which it is based was so small, but the newspaper reported that
40 per cent had university qualifications, 28 per cent had finished polytechnic or teacher training courses and 11 per cent had followed postgraduate degree courses. Only 2 per cent had received primary education alone . . . Asked about their perception of the atmosphere of racial integration and tolerance in Ireland, only 9 per cent of the asylum-seekers described it as good or very good, while over half called it poor or very poor . . . 70 per cent found it difficult to secure accommodation, with the majority citing racial discrimination by landlords as the main problem . . . The study concludes that "there is a failure to provide a fair and independent asylum determination process; an absence of legal assistance during the first stage of the determination process; a protracted period of waiting and uncertainty endured by asylum-seekers before even an initial decision is delivered"; and "a social ethos of hostility, reflected in hurtful media stereotyping towards asylum-seekers".
This is what the Government side is supporting. We are challenging it.
We are asking for certain modest things to be done. We are expressing our concern about the difficulties which exist. We are right to be concerned. One can only vote against this motion if one is unconcerned and does not accept there are difficulties. We are entitled to ask the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform to give the House an account and an explanation. I see the Chief Whip nodding his head and I hope that maybe he will vote with us. We are not being critical of the Minister, although God knows I could be – I am in my speech but not in the motion. There is nothing to prevent the Government side from voting for the motion. The Minister should explain why this Act, properly passed by both Houses of the Oireachtas, has yet to be fully implemented.