Ungenerous Ireland - Village Magazine

1 6 June 2017

HE 2015 Summer refugee ‘crisis’ was the

moment when refugees entered the European

consciousness as an existential dilemma.

Many European media asked if this inﬂux rep-

resented the death of the Schengen line, the

free travel zone and even of the European project. The

pan-European furore that followed contributed to the

Brexit vote. Indeed it is difﬁcult to think of that time with-

out being reminded of scenes of refugees at Calais

attempting to make their way across the sea to Britain

and of Nigel Farage campaigning in front of a billboard

depicting long lines of refugees.

However, to a large degree Irish society has escaped

the pan-European panic. There have been no terrorist

attacks in Ireland, and neither immigration nor the

recent refugee inﬂuxes have been a major factor in any

of our elections. News this week that one of the

perpetrators of the London

Bridge attack spent time in Ire-

land is notable as the ﬁrst time

Ireland has featured in interna-

tional discussions of Islamist

terrorism. On the face of it Ire

land would appear to have been

unscathed by the xenophobic

political tensions that have been

spurred in other countries.

However, consider Graph 1 on Irish asylum applica-

tions. 2015, the year of the refugee crisis, should have

been the year in which Ireland accepted its most refu-

gees. And yet it is was in 2002 that applications peaked

for asylum, at 11634.

Perhaps the recession led to the drop, yet if we look at

the table it really begins to plummet in 2003 and 2004,

boom years of great economic prosperity in the Repub

lic, before gradually dropping to a recent low of 916 in

2013.

For the sake of clarity it is important to note that an

asylum-seeker is an applicant for refugee status – some-

one hoping to be declared a refugee. Like other European

nations Ireland is obliged through international treaties

to accept refugees. Refugees are deﬁned as those who

are forced to leave their country in order to escape war,

persecution, or natural disaster. The situation in coun

tries like Syria is so bad that many of them are accepted

Economic migrants,

refugees, asylum-

seekers and asylum-

seekers-turned-refugees

Ungenerous

Ireland

In 2002

applications

peaked for

asylum, at

11634

POLITICS

by Luke O’Reilly

June 2017 1 7

to be refugees, without question: they do not

have to go through the process of seeking

asylum. For example in Germany in 2016 57% of

Syrians entered as refugees.

The ﬁgures for people entering the country as

asylum-seekers are different from those enter

ing as refugees.

Before 2015 Ireland’s efforts went almost

entirely into asylum-seekers rather than refu

gees. So a big reason for the strange graph is

that most of the crisis in 2015 were refugees, not

asylum seekers.

The Irish Refugee Programme (IRPP) was set

up as a direct response to the 2015 refugee

crisis. By the end of 2016 760 refugees had

arrived through it. The State committed to taking

in 4,000 people over three years through the

IRPP. The commitment of the IRPP applies to two

different groups of people. The ﬁrst group is

made up of people living in Turkey and Lebanon

who have ﬂed the Syrian war and already have

refugee status. The second is made up of people

who arrived in Greece and Italy by sea from Syria

whose asylum applications are to be assessed

in Ireland. 520 of the 760 refugees accepted in

2016 belonged to the ﬁrst group, 240 to the

second.

It is most dramatic to note that Germany,

albeit with demographic demands, will take a

million refugees over the same period.

To further complicate matters it is important

also to note the success rates for asylum-seek

ers in different countries. Ireland’s is particularly

low. For example over the period 2012-14 Ireland

accepted only 677 asylum applications from asy-

lum-seekers. Norway accepted 20 times as many

per head of population. The US accepted 68,317

asylum-seekers in the same period, the most in

the world; Germany 48,000; the UK 28,000.

During that period the US accepted 16.7% of asy-

lum-seekers; Germany 7.7%; the UK 16%;

Ireland 3%. In fact only 21% were rejected with

the majority deferred or closed for some reason,

including that the asylum-seeker leaves the

country.

Separate from asylum-seekers and refugees

are ordinary migrants, those who come to

Ireland for economic reasons, to make a better

life for themselves and their families.

The total ﬁgure for non-nationals in Ireland is

584,000 out of a total population of 4.7 m. The

ﬁgure of 12.5% of the population is substantially

higher than that in Britain where it is 8%, a little

more than in the US. However it should be

remembered that Ireland’s immigrants mostly

arrived in the last twenty years. Other richer

countries will have accepted generations of

immigration.

In recent years the categories have become

confused as many asylum applicants are in fact

economic migrants attempting to use asylum as

a way to enter into wealthy western countries. In

spite of how perilous their economic situation

can be, abject poverty has not been recognised

as a criterion for refugee status. Instead, the

Irish State’s suspicion that many asylum appli-

cants are in fact economic migrants in refugee’s

clothing lies at the heart of direct provision.

In his paper on ‘Social Welfare Law and Asy

lum-seekers in Ireland’, Liam Thornton sets out

how welfare conditions for migrants decreased

considerably after direct provision was intro-

duced in the year 2000. Before 2000

asylum-seekers could avail of social welfare like

anyone else in Irish society once they had met

the necessary conditions. This included pay-

ments for medical conditions, non-contributory

pensions if the asylum-seeker was over 65, one-

parent family payments and child benefit.

Asylum-seekers who did not qualify for pensions

or single parent allowances could still avail

of the same supplementary welfare allowance

that anyone else in the State could qualify for.

After the direct provision system was intro-

duced asylum applicants instead received their

supplementary welfare as a beneﬁt in kind in the

form of bed and board with an additional small

payment per adult per week and an additional

smaller payment per child per week.

The meagre accommodations that ground Ire-

land’s system of ‘direct provision’ are available

to asylum-seekers only.

Direct provision was introduced, according to

John O’Donoghue, the minister for justice at the

time, in order to be in line with changes to the

UK’s policies on asylum applicants and to pre

vent welfare fraud and welfare tourism by

asylum applicants.

It was in effect put in place in order to prevent

asylum applicants coming to Ireland.

At the time O’Donoghue stated that the

80,000 asylum-seekers in the UK would be “well

aware” of the more generous welfare entitle-

ments in Ireland once the UK moved to a

non-cash- based reception system. This was

supposedly supported by the fact that the U.K.’s

change in the UK’s policies towards asylum-

seekers in 1996 led to an increase in

asylum-seekers in Ireland. O’Donoghue

described the welfare provisions in Ireland for

asylum-seekers at the time as a magnet that was

drawing them in.

It was believed that by replacing the cash pay-

ments with the beneﬁt-in-kind system of direct

provision welfare fraud would be eliminated. The

Minister for Justice’s stated aim was to prevent

Ireland’s asylum welfare system from becoming

“the object of large-scale fraud planned and exe-

cuted by internationally organised criminal

gangs”.

It is clear then that direct provision as a deter

rent has played a large role in preventing Ireland

from receiving the inﬂux of asylum applicants

that other European countries have.

The graph shows that, as direct provision reg-

isters, the trend is downward, most signiﬁcantly

in 2003 and 2004.

In 2004 there was a referendum on the 27th

amendment to the Constitution which proposed

that children born on the Island of Ireland to par-

ents who were both foreign nationals would no

longer have a constitutional right to citizenship.

The amendment passed with 79% of the vote.

As a result of that referendum children of

asylum applicants- who in many cases have

been forced to wait in the direct provision system

for years while their applications are processed

and appealed- are not automatically afforded

Irish citizenship, as they would have been prior

to 2004.

That referendum was in part a response to the

2012-2014

the US accepted

16.7% of asylum-

seekers; Germany

7.7%; the UK 16%;

Ireland 3%

91 362

424

1179

3883

4626

7724

10938

10325

11634

7900

4766

4323

4314

3985

3866

2689

1939

1290

956

946

1448

3276

2244

771

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

12000

14000

1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017

Graph 1: Applications for Declaration as a Refugee in Ireland 1991 to End April 2017

Source: RIA Monthly Report April 2017

1 8 June 2017

POLITICS

2002 inﬂux of asylum applicants, as well as to

the fear of so-called anchor babies, a phenom

enon where it was believed that non-E.U.

nationals would tactically give birth to babies on

Irish soil in order to take advantage of their new-

born children’s subsequent Irish citizenship.

This is the kind of xenophobic thinking that

recalls the famous Charlie Hebdo cover of preg-

nant Boko Haram women over the caption

‘beneﬁt queens’.

In 2015 Germany received 1.5 million asylum

applicants while Ireland received 3276 asylum

applicants.

To put those numbers in perspective Ireland

had a population of 4.641 million while Germany

had a population of 81.41 million in 2015. The

German population then was roughly 17 and a

half times larger than the population of Ireland,

yet Germany took roughly 335 times more

asylum applicants in 2015.

It is perhaps more instructive to compare

Ireland’s intake with other similarly sized Euro-

pean countries. Between June 2015 and June

2016 the Irish State received 2780 asylum

applicants. In the same period Norway, with a

population of 5 million received 28, 000 asylum

applicants. Denmark, with a population of 5.4

million received 21,000 applicants.

So far in 2017 409 letters of intention to deport

have been issued to asylum-seekers and 1042

letters of intention to deport have been issued

to non-asylum-seekers. Receiving a letter of

intention to deport does not mean that the recipi-

ent will be deported, rather it is the start of a

process whereby the recipient’s case will be

assessed before a ﬁnal decision is made over

whether or not to actually deport them.

Those who have been issued with intention-

to-deport letters can apply for leave to remain

on humanitarian grounds. Not all those

who are granted leave to remain

have received letters of intention

to deport, although according

to the Minister for Justice this

subset is largely made up of

children.

So far in 2017 80 asylum-

seekers and 21

non-asylum-seekers were

granted leave to remain.

The most recent ﬁgures for

leave to remain applications have

show that 1328 asylum-seekers and

2632 non-asylum-seekers are awaiting deci

sions over leave-to-remain applications. In 2017

so far 271 asylum-seekers and 91 non-asylum-

seekers have received deportation orders. 36

asylum-seekers and 5 non-asylum-seekers have

been deported. A deportation order can be

revoked after it has been issued if there has

been a substantial and material change in the

applicant’s circumstances since the deportation

order was made.

In an article in the New York Review of Books

the novelist Zadie Smith writes of being asked:

“You were such a champion of ‘multiculturalism’,

can you admit now that it has failed?”. Smith’s

reply is to point out that to conceive of

multiculturalism as a social experiment while

holding cultural homogeneity as natural is

wrongheaded. In the case of direct provision

that Ireland did not take in the massive inﬂux of

asylum applicants that Germany, Finland,

Norway or Denmark did in 2015 was the

result of policy, not historical acci

dent. There is nothing natural

about giving asylum-seekers

supplementary welfare as a

beneﬁt in kind and conﬁning

them to holding centres for

years on end. The purpose

of direct provision is to

deter asylum-seekers, not

primarily to accept them. In

the guise of preventing

unwanted economic migrants we

have created a system that dissuades

those who genuinely meet the criteria of refugee

status from coming here.

We have already had our xenophobic referen

dum in the form of the 2004 amendment to the

constitution. When it comes to refugee accept

ance we lived in a world post-Brexit long before

Brexit ever happened.

Indeed we may even have our own version of

Katie Hopkins. Vogue Williams who despite the

international forename is Irish wrote recently in

the Sunday World, “Thousands of radical

extremists must be locked up in new internment

camps to protect Britain”. Williams numbered

the potential detainees randomly at around

3,000. As these were “far too many to keep a

close eye on” internment was imperative in

Britain.

Thankfully there have been some reforms

since the Working Group on Direct Provision

Report was published eighteen months ago.

Over 1000 people who had been in the system

of direct provision for over 5 years were granted

residency. Although still below the €29.00 per

week recommended by the Working Group the

living allowance for children has been raised by

€5.40 to €15.60 per week. However, the adult

allowance of €19.10 remained unchanged in this

year’s budget.

Most dramatically, the Supreme Court has

determined that a Burmese man who spent eight

years living in direct provision had his constitu-

tional right to seek employment, even as a

non-national, violated.

While recognising the “legitimate differ-

ences” between asylum-seekers and citizens

the Supreme Court ruled that “in principle… in

circumstances where there is no temporal limit

on the asylum process” an “absolute prohibi-

tion” on seeking employment is “contrary to the

constitutional right to seek employment”.

Following this decision it is possible that many

of those who have been living in direct provision

for years while denied their right to work will be

able to sue the Irish State.

By the end of 2016

in response to the

crisis 760 refugees

had arrived in

Ireland

Highest number of first time applicants relative to the population in Hungary and Sweden

Compared with the population of each Member State, the highest number of registered first time applicants in 2015

was recorded in Hungary (17 699 first time applicants per million inhabitants), ahead of Sweden (16 016), Austria

(9 970), Finland (5 876) and Germany (5 441). In contrast, the lowest numbers were observed in Croatia (34

applicants per million inhab

itants), Slova kia (50), Romania (62), Portugal (80) and Lithuania (93). In 2015, there

were on average 2 470 first time asylum applicants per million inhabitants in the EU Member States.

First time a sylum applicants in the EU Member States

Number of first time applican ts

Share in EU total

(%)

Number of

applicants per

million inhabitant s*

2014 2015

Change (in %)

2015 / 2014

2015 2015

EU 562 680 1 255 640 +123% 100.0% 2 470

Belgium

14 045 38 990 +178% 3.1% 3 463

Bulgaria

10 805 20 165 +87% 1.6% 2 800

Czech Republic

905 1 235 +36% 0.1% 117

Denmark

14 535 20 825 +43% 1.7% 3 679

Germany

172 945 441 800 +155% 35.2% 5 441

Estonia

145 225 +54% 0.0% 172

Ireland

1 440 3 270 +127% 0.3% 707

Greece

7 585 11 370 +50% 0.9% 1 047

Spain

5 460 14 600 +167% 1.2% 314

France

58 845 70 570 +20% 5.6% 1 063

Croatia

380 140 -63% 0.0% 34

Italy

63 655 83 245 +31% 6.6% 1 369

Cyprus

1 480 2 105 +42% 0.2% 2 486

Latvia

365 330 -10% 0.0% 165

Lithuania

385 275 -29% 0.0% 93

Luxembourg

1 030 2 360 +129% 0.2% 4 194

Hungary

41 215 174 435 +323% 13.9% 17 699

Malta

1 275 1 695 +33% 0.1% 3 948

Netherlands

21 780 43 035 +98% 3.4% 2 546

Austria

25 675 85 505 +233% 6.8% 9 970

Poland

5 610 10 255 +83% 0.8% 270

Portugal

440 830 +89% 0.1% 80

Romania

1 500 1 225 -18% 0.1% 62

Slovenia

355 260 -27% 0.0% 126

Slovakia

230 270 +18% 0.0% 50

Finland

3 490 32 150 +822% 2.6% 5 876

Sweden

74 980 156 110 +108% 12.4% 16 016

United Kingdom

32 120 38 370 +19% 3.1% 591

Norway

10 910 30 470 +179% - 5 898

Switzerland

21 940 38 060 +73% - 4 620

Number of first time applicants is rounded to the nearest 5. Calculations are based on exact data.

* Inhabitants refer to the resident population at 1 January 2015.

- Not applicable

The source dataset can be found here.

Graph 2:

First time asylum

applicants in EU

Member State,

2015

Source: Eurostat

June 2017 1 9

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