This week a Conference organised by SOLAS, a partnership of SVP\u2019s Cro\u00ed na Gaillimhe resource centre and Mayo Intercultural Action heard from three asylum-seekers who, between them, have spent the equivalent of 18 years in direct provision.\u00a0 The room admired the man who spoke about his depression but also his resilience, his resignation and his hope.\u00a0 The room respected the man who spoke about his idleness but also about his ability, his poverty, his desire to work.\u00a0\u00a0 But the room wept with the mother who cried about raising a child in a room of strangers.\u00a0 A 2 year old who tasted freedom at a friend\u2019s home this Christmas only to return to four walls.\u00a0 A mother who has money for nappies but not for wipes.\u00a0 All three spoke of their sadness, but there was no happiness.<\/p>\n
People who work with asylum-seekers trapped in direct provision know them in person and as people.\u00a0 They know their ambitions, their desires for themselves, for their children, for a life in Ireland.\u00a0 Sadly too they know their frustration, resignation, sadness, homesickness, depression and isolation.\u00a0 Too many people either do not know this reality in our midst, remain unaware, or maybe afraid of this reality.\u00a0 The reality is that due to the inability of the State to process asylum applications about 4300 people, 1400 of whom are children, are languishing in this institutional limbo, most for over four years.<\/p>\n
The system of direct provision arose out of a large increase in the numbers of people seeking asylum and the lack of capacity to house them.\u00a0\u00a0 However, once in place, direct provision, and the management of direct provision, did little to recognise the humanity of those people living in it.\u00a0 In fact, it and its ancillary rules, became part of the suite of measures of the State to dissuade people to seek asylum in Ireland.<\/p>\n
As one side of the State\u2019s apparatus worked to prevent more people coming to Ireland the other part of the equation, the asylum application and decision making processes for those in it, groaned and creaked through its work.\u00a0\u00a0 The legal dimension of the asylum process has left people without decision, without hope and without a future to speak of.\u00a0 While the legal lingo promised decisions and information \u2018shortly\u2019 and \u2018in due course\u2019, twenty-somethings became thirty and children were born, weaned, trained and educated.<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s a story of processes, policies and politics.\u00a0 The real story is that people are now, presently, as we speak, as we eat, as we read, trapped in direct provision.\u00a0 Perhaps our ears will prick up when we say that around a third of those trapped are children. Trapped children, born in Ireland, who know no better than sharing a room with strangers, whose living quarters are a room, who have never seen their mother or father prepare a meal.\u00a0 Who do not know life out of institutional living.\u00a0 That\u2019s something Irish society should know a thing or two about. \u00a0These people came to Ireland seeking asylum but have fallen into the architecture of asylum.\u00a0 The old fashioned kind.<\/p>\n
We need to find the building blocks that create a proper asylum process, both legal and social.\u00a0 We need to find the right mechanism to ensure future asylum-seekers have fast and fair decisions.\u00a0 But right now, we must find the humanity to recognise that the men, women, mothers, fathers, boys, girls who reside in direct provision should no longer need to wait for legal niceties, be subjected to misplaced fears nor be the human shield against others who may want to come here.\u00a0 \u00a0We literally need to free people from direct provision.\u00a0 It must be planned, managed, responsible, supportive and supported.\u00a0 It\u2019s not a big step.\u00a0 Through our humanity we have the opportunity, no, the obligation, to restore these individuals their humanity.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say \u2018yes\u2019 to ending direct provision.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After attending a SOLAS conference Brendan Hennessy discusses why we have to find the building blocks that create a proper asylum process, both legal and social and why we have to to say 'yes' to ending direct provision<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":39277,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"Tribe__Tickets_Plus__Commerce__WooCommerce__Main","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","entry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n