Asylum-seeker policy criticised

An otherwise "hyperactive" Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, had failed to produce any legislation which would protect asylum-seekers, a speaker told a trade union women's conference yesterday.

The current Government represented a collection of "new Dublin 6 nationalists", who were almost xenophobic towards international legislation, an NUI Galway law lecturer, Mr Donncha O'Connell, claimed at the SIPTU conference in Galway.

Last year's Operation Hyphen by the Garda Síochána was also "a completely futile and daft exercise", the purpose of which was clearly designed to frighten asylum-seekers, Mr O'Connell said.

The operation had netted nothing in terms of rooting out abuses of the system, Mr O'Connell added, and in some of the Garda raids pregnant women had been woken from their beds.

He said the Government's attitude towards asylum-seekers contrasted with a very open attitude towards refugees by Irish people.

The Government's policy was one of "deterrence and disablement" to discourage asylum- seekers from staying, and Mr McDowell had displayed a public hostility towards the representations of human rights organisations, which was reflected in his references to the "so-called human rights community".

While the trade unions had been generous in their support for their defence, the exclusion of asylum-seekers from the latest social partnership was "deeply disappointing", Mr O'Connell said.

It was simply unsustainable for one Government Department, Justice, Equality and Law Reform, to ignore social partnership while the whole basis of public policy development was premised on the idea of such an approach.

Referring to the situation of migrant workers, which was separate in legislative terms to that of asylum-seekers, Mr O'Connell said that almost half of all work permits issued or renewed last year went to women.

The exclusion of domestic workers from the scope of protection of the Employment Equality Act, 1998, was having a disproportionately adverse impact on women, particularly on migrant women workers, he said.

It also reflected an enduring ideology that refused to view domestic work as real work. "This is outrageously ironic when one considers the idealised view of motherhood and domesticity contained in Article 41 of the Irish Constitution," Mr O'Connell added.

The fact that childcare work was to be excluded from the work permits scheme would only partially offset this problem as the exclusion was not retrospective, he said. This left certain migrant women workers in a legal limbo. He referred to research which is due to be published by the Equality Authority, which showed that there was widespread ignorance of social supports among migrant workers.

Complaints about working conditions were frequently made to embassies and consulates, Mr O'Connell said, and this represented a major challenge for the trade union movement.

The movement needed to pressurise the Government into ratifying relevant international instruments which would offer more protection to these workers, he added.