Madam, – We are writing in protest at the Government’s decision to transfer 111 asylum-seekers from Mosney to hostel accommodation in Dublin and elsewhere.
Seeking asylum involves upheaval and trauma. It involves learning to live with one’s life on hold during unnecessarily lengthy asylum determination processes. Despite this, those protesting have made a home in Mosney. This further upheaval, undertaken without consultation, demands that they leave friends and support networks in Mosney and the local area, and move to hostel accommodation that reduces already minimal levels of privacy and autonomy.
This decision is being justified on the need to maximise value for the “taxpayer”. As such, it is a further instance of the profit-before-people mentality that is rehearsed every time the Government seeks to remove or reduce social provision. In the era of Nama, this cynical use of asylum-seekers to display a new-found diligence is less than convincing. We refuse to be spoken for as taxpayers obsessed with minimal margins of return on “investment”. We respond instead as citizens who reject the reduction of everything to a calculus that does not allow for the human cost of anxiety, stress and humiliation.
Resisting this relocation should be seen as a step toward abolishing the current system. The direct provision and dispersal system was introduced in 1999 as a temporary regional measure, but remains as a national scheme, housing asylum-seekers with for-profit providers and pauperising them on an adult weekly allowance of €19.10, and €9.60 for each child.
As the Free Legal Advice centres (FLAC) wrote in a 2010 report, “The direct provision system does not provide an environment conducive to the enjoyment or fulfilment of the most basic human rights, including the rights to health, food, housing and family life. It also has repercussions on the right to education and the right to work as well as freedom of expression, freedom of movement and freedom of association.”
Although asylum-seekers are deliberately warehoused outside society, the residents of Mosney have taken their place in society as best they can. Despite the political imperative of integration, their status dictates that they cannot integrate into the society in which they have lived for years. We strongly urge Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern to revoke the inhumane decision to relocate residents of Mosney and to consult them before any further action is taken. We will act, organise and protest in ongoing solidarity with the asylum-seekers if their demands are not heard.
We also urge Mr Ahern to undertake a radical reform of the “direct provision” system, and to ensure that asylum-seekers are treated fairly, allowing them to enjoy the basic rights to which all people in Ireland are entitled. – Yours, etc,