Sinn Féin’s new policy document “International Protection, A fair system that works” is a substantial contribution to the national debate in Ireland on the issue of political asylum and protection of refugees. It was drawn up in response to the widespread perception that the party’s steep decline in the polls was due to getting out of line with its support base on the matter. While the new policy certainly is a major improvement on the party’s previous wooly position, the first question to be asked is whether it will rectify its problems in this area. It will certainly help but there are still glaring weaknesses in its position. There were clearly contradictory forces at work in drawing it up.
The document fails to spell out in a clear and unambiguous manner that the primary function of a Government is to promote the interests of its citizens and that, along with its basic international obligations, this must dominate its policy formation. Polls indicate that many in the community believe that the current Government is implementing a policy which is not in the interests of the citizenry and are doing so at the behest of Brussels.
It does make a strong statement at the outset that Sinn Féin is clear that our migration policies must be decided by an Irish government, not by the European Union. However, this appears as a stand along statement without any real follow up. The present unrest with the tents on the streets of Dublin will not be solved unless the Irish Government gains some control of the situation. There is no commitment in the document to a future Sinn Féin Government seeking withdrawal from the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum and making our own decisions.
The document recognises that Ireland is part of the Common Travel Area and that flows of those seeking protection between the Republic and Britain are many times the magnitude of those with mainland Europe. Therefore, a migration arrangement with London is something which should be pursued. This is to be warmly welcomed.
The first priority of any new Government should be to reduce the number of applications being processed and that can only be achieved by having a fair and efficient system. The number entering the process should roughly correspond to the number exiting.
There is a need to ensure that the system in the Republic is not out of line with our neighbours. There is a strong belief in the State that the current Minister for Immigration, Roderic O’Gorman, was actively encouraging asylum seekers. The document is absolutely correct in calling for all those seeking protection to be treated equally and not to have benefits which are unavailable to Irish citizens or in our neighbours. Favourable treatment in areas like housing, access to medical care, etc. only breeds resentment and is a major contributor to the current civil unrest.
No airline flying passengers into the Republic allows them to board aircraft without documentation. The State needs to have access to the records of the airlines and the ferry companies to end the practise of “would be” asylum seekers destroying their passports on the journey. Ryanair has already offered that facility and claimed the Government did not take up their offer. Other airlines would have a similar attitude. On the other hand, increasing fines on carriers, as the document proposes, would have little or no effect.
As the document points out there is an urgent need to ensure compliance with decisions to refuse asylum applications. Sinn Féin needs to spell out more how they would deal with States which refuse to accept its own citizens back. As somebody who worked closely with the Immigration authorities in the past, this was always a major difficulty for us. I was somewhat shocked to find that deportation flights had ceased in 2019 and were not resumed, essentially the State had no ability to enforce its decisions. No wonder the whole system went into disrepute.
I would not like to be too negative about this attempt by Sinn Féin to put together a coherent policy in this tricky area. There is much good in the policy document, including respect for human rights and a determination to end the obscene profits being made by private contractors in the asylum system. It also rightly states that there needs to be a more transparent system of deciding on locations for asylum centres and the removal of private contractors in deciding on the venues.
As I stated in a previous article, it took something major to change the atmosphere in a country, once famous for its céad míle fáilte hospitality to one where there is widespread hostility to the arrival of some migrants. That something was a willful neglect of immigration and the communities it most heavily impacted on. This document is a good start but there is still some way to go before those alienated by the old Sinn Féin line of supporting the present Government come back to the fold. As Mary Lou McDonald has stated, people need to be assured that Sinn Féin has their backs. This document will go some of the way, but it is only a start, not a completed task.
The party needs to break the cosy consensus on this issue in Leinster House to convince its base that it has changed. A good start would be to unambiguously support efforts to get peace negotiations underway between Ukraine and Russia and a commitment to encourage Ukrainians to return to their homeland once peace is restored.
Sinn Féin’s new policy document “International Protection, A fair system that works” is a substantial contribution to the national debate in Ireland on the issue of political asylum and protection of refugees. It was drawn up in response to the widespread perception that the party’s steep decline in the polls was due to getting out of line with its support base on the matter. While the new policy certainly is a major improvement on the party’s previous wooly position, the first question to be asked is whether it will rectify its problems in this area. It will certainly help but there are still glaring weaknesses in its position. There were clearly contradictory forces at work in drawing it up.
The document fails to spell out in a clear and unambiguous manner that the primary function of a Government is to promote the interests of its citizens and that, along with its basic international obligations, this must dominate its policy formation. Polls indicate that many in the community believe that the current Government is implementing a policy which is not in the interests of the citizenry and are doing so at the behest of Brussels.
It does make a strong statement at the outset that Sinn Féin is clear that our migration policies must be decided by an Irish government, not by the European Union. However, this appears as a stand along statement without any real follow up. The present unrest with the tents on the streets of Dublin will not be solved unless the Irish Government gains some control of the situation. There is no commitment in the document to a future Sinn Féin Government seeking withdrawal from the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum and making our own decisions.
The document recognises that Ireland is part of the Common Travel Area and that flows of those seeking protection between the Republic and Britain are many times the magnitude of those with mainland Europe. Therefore, a migration arrangement with London is something which should be pursued. This is to be warmly welcomed.
The first priority of any new Government should be to reduce the number of applications being processed and that can only be achieved by having a fair and efficient system. The number entering the process should roughly correspond to the number exiting.
There is a need to ensure that the system in the Republic is not out of line with our neighbours. There is a strong belief in the State that the current Minister for Immigration, Roderic O’Gorman, was actively encouraging asylum seekers. The document is absolutely correct in calling for all those seeking protection to be treated equally and not to have benefits which are unavailable to Irish citizens or in our neighbours. Favourable treatment in areas like housing, access to medical care, etc. only breeds resentment and is a major contributor to the current civil unrest.
No airline flying passengers into the Republic allows them to board aircraft without documentation. The State needs to have access to the records of the airlines and the ferry companies to end the practise of “would be” asylum seekers destroying their passports on the journey. Ryanair has already offered that facility and claimed the Government did not take up their offer. Other airlines would have a similar attitude. On the other hand, increasing fines on carriers, as the document proposes, would have little or no effect.
As the document points out there is an urgent need to ensure compliance with decisions to refuse asylum applications. Sinn Féin needs to spell out more how they would deal with States which refuse to accept its own citizens back. As somebody who worked closely with the Immigration authorities in the past, this was always a major difficulty for us. I was somewhat shocked to find that deportation flights had ceased in 2019 and were not resumed, essentially the State had no ability to enforce its decisions. No wonder the whole system went into disrepute.
I would not like to be too negative about this attempt by Sinn Féin to put together a coherent policy in this tricky area. There is much good in the policy document, including respect for human rights and a determination to end the obscene profits being made by private contractors in the asylum system. It also rightly states that there needs to be a more transparent system of deciding on locations for asylum centres and the removal of private contractors in deciding on the venues.
As I stated in a previous article, it took something major to change the atmosphere in a country, once famous for its céad míle fáilte hospitality to one where there is widespread hostility to the arrival of some migrants. That something was a willful neglect of immigration and the communities it most heavily impacted on. This document is a good start but there is still some way to go before those alienated by the old Sinn Féin line of supporting the present Government come back to the fold. As Mary Lou McDonald has stated, people need to be assured that Sinn Féin has their backs. This document will go some of the way, but it is only a start, not a completed task.
The party needs to break the cosy consensus on this issue in Leinster House to convince its base that it has changed. A good start would be to unambiguously support efforts to get peace negotiations underway between Ukraine and Russia and a commitment to encourage Ukrainians to return to their homeland once peace is restored.