Sir, - As your Editorial of December 2nd rightly points out there is not a refugee crisis in this country. There is a crisis of racism.
This particularly nasty genie has been released from its bottle and given free rein by the combined effects of environmental indifference, gutter journalism, public hysteria and sheer selfishness all round.
The Minister for Justice's "fast trace" initiative is a perfect product of this environment and perfectly in tune with it. It is politically clever, but morally bankrupt.
It was always essential, but now particularly so, that the processing of asylum applications should be at the furthest possible remove from any possibility of political influence. The current climate makes it all the more imperative that the procedure put in place should be given a statutory footing and be put in the hands of an independent tribunal with the right of appeal to the courts. We have used this model in other areas and I see no reason why it should not be used in this context.
A properly resourced legal aid and translation system should also be made available to all applicants.
The Minister has instead opted for a "quick fix" solution, with the minimum of accountability and transparency, which in his own words is required to follow only "as far as is practicable" the "philosophy" of the Refugee Act, 1996. This is quite breathtakingly cynical. Clearly for "fast track" we are to read "short shrift".
We are an intelligent, well educated, prosperous and resourceful people. Our economy is booming. We are also pathologically unwilling to tackle any social problem on our own doorstep. We have failed the travellers, the handicapped, the unemployed and virtually every inner-city community in the country. We have "Riverdanced", packaged and marketed our image so successfully that we can no longer see ourselves as we really are.
To paraphrase Hamlet, there is something rotten in the State of Ireland. The Minister may move the refugees on, but where are we going? - Yours, etc.,
Evelyn Leyden,
Drumcliffe, Ennis, Co Clare.