Mars ain’t the kind of place for refugees
On 23 July, Sinn Féin issued what it described as “a plan to fix our broken international protection system”[i]. In very summary terms, the “plan” outlines how the party believes that both asylum seekers and the “communities” that accommodate them should be treated. The plan makes other individual proposals which I am not addressing here. The interface between applicants and communities is its core.
For asylum seekers, the answers are simple. They should be dealt with briskly and either granted asylum or sent packing expeditiously, accommodated properly during the process, integrated into society if their applications are successful and booted out promptly if they are rejected, all done in accordance with rules “that are applied fairly”. The party would turbocharge the application system by trebling the personnel of the International Protection Office from 400 to 1,200 and the resources of the associated Protection Appeals Tribunal likewise.
For “communities”, the answers are not a great deal more complex. In the fullness of time, the plan envisages that, while their applications are being processed, asylum seekers should be housed in “new purpose-built centres where the capacity and the services exist to support them”. These would be mainly state-owned, thereby ending “profiteering by private interests”. Where they should not be housed are “deprived communities that are already struggling with a lack of services, amenities, facilities and decades of abandonment by government”.
But, in the short-medium term, Sinn Féin proposes “prioritising the creation of temporary emergency accommodation to meet the most basic needs for… shelter and safety.” At present, “over-reliance on commercial providers by government has resulted in private interests dictating where accommodation is located.” The Sinn Féin search would start with “a pre-assessment of the needs of communities.” Centres should be located only in communities which have “the services and capacities for them”.
The plan envisages an audit by the Department of Children of any proposed accommodation location “outlining what capacity exists in terms of Medical, Educational, Community, Transport and Housing Services” and “The creation of an honest, consistent multi-departmental and multi-agency approach to community consultation” with scope for submissions and observations to which the International Protection Accommodation Service (IPAS) would be obliged to issue a public response.
Before offering a few observations on this plan, it must be noted that any plan about the asylum process is subject to important inherent uncertainty. Nobody knows how many asylum seekers will show up on our shores from one day to the next, let alone from one year to the next. That does not mean that planning is futile. But it does mean that any credible plan must integrate suppleness and nimbleness.
Sinn Féin’s plan does not state a single empirical assumption on which its merits are founded. For example, it would be helpful if the party could offer guidance on the scale of dedicated accommodation it imagines will be necessary looking out from today. How many accommodation centres does it think will be needed and how many applicants will each one house? That is not an academic matter. It will surely take many months if not years between identification of possible sites, community consultations, planning permission and eventual construction. A network of decent, permanent “purpose-built centres” cannot be established or flexed on the hoof or at the drop of a hat. The lead time from decision to completion is years rather than months.
Relatedly, it should be noted also that this plan does not specify costs for any of its proposals.
But let’s turn to its proposals for the “here and now”: the selection of temporary emergency accommodation; i.e., existing facilities of some kind. What kinds of facilities they have in mind is defined only by the notion that they should not be buildings and land more suitable for other purposes.
The party does not say how it would go about selecting candidate sites beyond that they should be located in places that have the capacity for them and that their designation as suitable should follow the process of community consultation described above. That is as clear as mud.
For example, does Sinn Féin envisage that, on arrival into government, it would identify a long list of candidate sites across the country and conduct simultaneous audits and consultation processes in relation to all of them, thus establishing a long “oven ready” standby list? While perhaps commendable in theory, in practice this approach is fraught with the complication that the government would find itself dealing with multiple communities nationwide at any given time, all concerned about platoons of asylum seekers being visited upon them but with time on their side to mount stubborn resistance to the prospect.
Or does Sinn Féin envisage a continuation of the present ad hoc-ery. As more applicants arrive, the authorities scramble to find additional accommodation for them wherever they possibly can? This approach is hardly conducive to the calm and considered conduct of audits and consultations, submissions and responses.
It should be noted that the “plan” makes no suggestion that the government should invite applications from communities to be considered as a location for temporary accommodation, an approach that would seem a reasonable starting point if there was any smidgin of a prospect that communities might embrace the concept. Sinn Féin already know that communities keen to attract clusters of asylum seekers are as rare as hen’s teeth.
But then, this flimsy 12-page document is not really a plan at all. It is an idealised sketch of how, in some world that is not the Ireland of this moment, the potential clash of tectonic plates might be muted if not avoided between the need to house asylum seekers somewhere and communities’ reluctance to do so within their orbit.
In parenthesis, the document offers no definition of what counts as a “community” as if the word itself is sufficiently warm and cosy to require no further elaboration. It passes over entirely how the balance of community will or appetite might be established. There will be audits and consultations, submissions and responses, for sure. But, on how these will flow into the weighing of a decision, the plan offers only silence.
The opening paragraph of the document includes this description of the balance to be established between asylum seekers and communities. This will be:
…a system that works well, works quickly, where the rules are applied, where fairness is paramount, and where people are treated with dignity and local communities are treated with respect.
That sounds great, but has less substance than candy floss.
In truth, Sinn Féin are concerned about only one of those stakeholders: the “communities” within which it is seeking to harvest votes and within the next few months too. There is no crop of votes to be gleaned from future asylum seekers.
The relevant dog-whistle is easy to find. The party offers the following as one of the reasons for its opposition to Ireland’s participation in the entirety of the EU Migration Pact.
We have to be able to access the fingerprint database, to ensure we have more information on who enters the State and to assist with vetting, conducting checks, tackling child trafficking and to return asylum seekers to other EU countries as appropriate.
This is a nod to the trope about “single unvetted foreign males of military age” from whom the pure and unsullied Irish, especially our comely maidens and cherubic children, need protection. As if the same women and children face no threat whatsoever from our strong domestic production line of male miscreants who are subject to no obligatory vetting or fingerprinting whatsoever.
Sinn Féin must be getting desperate! Come election time they will surely learn that trying simultaneously to amble with the hare of respect for asylum seekers and trot after the hounds of enthusiastic racists will only cause their candidates to be dinner for the latter.
[i] International-Protection-A-fair-system-that-works.pdf (sinnfein.ie)
