THE FORMER MINISTER with responsibility for immigration has criticised the government’s plans to offer families who have sought asylum €10,000 if they agree to drop their application and leave the country.

It comes as TDs heard today that plans to bring Irish law in with line with the EU’s plans to overhaul the asylum system represent a “backwards step” in terms of their treatment of vulnerable people.

As The Journal has previously reported, the Department of Justice has contacted all 33,000 asylum seekers in recent weeks to inform them they can now get five times the previous offer.

The sum for individuals who agree to leave the country is now €2,500.

The previous allowance was €1,200 for an individual or €2,000 for a couple or family.

Roderic O’Gorman, the former Minister for Integration, said he has no recollection of such a scheme “ever being discussed” during his tenure.

The Green Party TD labelled the policy “window dressing” and said the government needs to put more energy into providing sufficient accommodation for those seeking asylum.

He was minister until the new government earlier this year, seeing Fianna Fáil’s Jim O’Callaghan taking over responsibility when the brief was moved into the new Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration.

“Since October of last year, the numbers of people seeking international protection have reduced by about a third every month. They’re still significant, but it has certainly made it easier for the new government and the new minister to accommodate people,” O’Gorman said.

O’Gorman said that “those low numbers are going to reverse” if the UK’s Labour Party continue to harden their stance on immigration or if the UK votes in a Tory government in the next election.

“We’re going to see high numbers coming again. And I have not seen the new government take the steps to actually have accommodation, sufficient accommodation, ready to deal with the potential,” he said.

“We are in an incredibly vulnerable position, and we are incredibly dependent on what happens in the UK in terms of our own levels, the levels of people seeking international protection.”

TDs told Migration Pact represents ‘backwards step’

Members of the Oireachtas Justice Committee heard significant concerns expressed about the EU’s planned overhaul of the asylum system.

The government is proceeding with the fresh legislation to bring Ireland in line with EU requirements under the Asylum and Migration Pact.

The EU pact seeks to create uniform rules around the identification and speeding up of decisions on asylum claims of people who arrive from outside the EU, and to develop a common database about new arrivals to Europe.

But the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission told TDs today that it believes Irish legislation to bring us in line with the EU could go “further than the Pact requires in restricting rights and freedoms”.

Chief Commissioner Liam Herrick said that this was particularly evident in the way the Bill treats vulnerable people including victims of trafficking, disabled people and children in the asylum process.

Another issue raised by Herrick with TDs, which he said potentially affect the rights of all international protection applicants, are that applicants will be less entitled to proper legal representation.

Under the terms of the proposed legislation, shortly after arrival in Ireland, applicants will get ‘legal counselling’ before their first instance interview – and not legal advice and representation.

But Herrick said this was an issue, as the government’s bill does not define ‘legal counselling’.

“We know what it is not: legal advice. This is a backwards step from the current situation where legal advice is available and Ireland has opted for a minimalist approach here,” Herrick said.

“People seeking international protection, many who are vulnerable and traumatised, will now have to navigate the critical first stage of the International Protection process without the support and protection of independent and confidential legal advice.”

Department officials at the committee said that legal counselling is “not intended to change”, but the details of how exactly it will be provided for in the bill are still under active consideration.

Social Democrats justice spokesperson Gary Gannon said he had “huge concerns” over the plans, adding that TDs need to be “very cautious” how they proceed.

“I’m not sure how a country of ours with a legacy of incarceration, detention and failures of all that go with it, can actually start going down a road by which we have so little clarity, so little access to further information,” Gannon said.

With reporting by Eoghan Dalton