BackOn Wednesday 25 September IOI President and Irish Ombudsman Peter Tyndall delivered a briefing to the Parliamentary Justice and Equality Committee on his Office’s experience of dealing with complaints from people living in Direct Provision.
In Ireland asylum-seekers and their children are accommodated in residential institutions, under a reception system known as ‘Direct Provision’. The system meets the basic needs of food and shelter for asylum seekers directly while their claims for refugee status are being processed.
There have been significant improvements in the sector since the Ombudsman Outreach programme started in the summer of 2017, however many issues remain. These include the length of time people have to wait for a substantive decision on their asylum application and the use of emergency accommodation due to a lack of capacity in the customised Direct Provision centres. People are sharing rooms as a family, or as unrelated adults. Whereas this might be acceptable in the very short term, the length of stay makes it entirely unsuitable.
The streamlining of the asylum assessment process in January 2018 has reduced the time taken to make decisions on applications. However, it remains the case that many asylum seekers being assessed under the previous process have been waiting three or more years for a decision.
Due to an upsurge in applicants, which increased by 25% for 2018 over 2017 and a further 26% pro rata for the first eight months of 2019, the capacity of the current Direct Provision centres to accommodate asylum seekers was exceeded. This upsurge in numbers has resulted in many people being placed directly in emergency accommodation in hotels, guesthouses and bed & breakfast accommodation without first going through the normal screening process. This meant that, among other issues, they were not provided with Personal Public Service Numbers or medical cards. The Ombudsman Outreach team has engaged directly with residents in emergency accommodation through a programme of visits to their places of residence. As a response to the issues raised by residents through that programme, the Ombudsman facilitated arrangements with the Health Service Executive and the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection through which the residents were linked into the services they are entitled to.
The full briefing made by Ombudsman Peter Tyndall can be found on the website.
The Ombudsman has published commentaries which set out what the problems identified in the sector, and what we did in response. The most recent commentary is “The Ombudsman and Direct Provision: Update for 2018”.
Source: Office of the Ombudsman of Ireland
