asylum and accommodating asylum seekers had begun in the mid-1990s. Before then Ireland received few applications.
Calls from some quarters to allow asylum seekers to work were dismissed by government. Such a right, John O’Donoghue had said, “would simply create another pull factor”. Conditions in centres have varied over the years, with some, like Mosney, in Co Meath, providing small independent housing units. Until recently, most centres did not have kitchen facilities, and residents were forced to eat in canteens at prearranged times. Parents told of putting food in plastic bags for their children who might not make it home in time for the evening meal.
Although regular direct-provision inspections are carried out, the same rules do not apply in emergency accommodation, which tends to be run by hotel and B&B owners with limited, if any, experience of working with asylum seekers. In April 2000 the plan was to accommodate people for no more than six months. By the end of the first decade, applicants were spending as long as eight to 10 years waiting, mainly as a result of prolonged legal challenges against earlier decisions., says austerity led to a serious deterioration in conditions at centres, while job cuts saw a drop in the number of staff processing applications.
They basically train you not to work. I could have had a master’s degree in that time, but instead they spent eight years teaching me how to rely on social welfare He wonders how many of the asylum seekers who spent a decade or more in the system are actually capable of working now. “They basically train you not to work. I could have had a master’s degree in that time, but instead they spent eight years teaching me how to rely on social welfare. You don’t know how to contribute. You live in your own little shell.”
The Government can “pat themselves on the back” for opening the labour market, but they never would have changed the system without pressure from the courts, says Khambule. However, while some asylum seekers are now eligible to work, they cannot apply until they have spent nine months in the country. Anyone appealing the first rejection of their application cannot work.