Asylum-seekers' children are losing weight from hunger as a result of the Government's policy of "direct provision" introduced last year, according to a new report.
Mothers cannot breast-feed their babies due to malnutrition, according to the Irish Refugee Council, and the report said parents are humiliated in front of their children by staff in some of the hostels paid for by the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform.
The report calls for the abolition of "direct provision" and for families with children to be moved to private rented accommodation.
The report was funded by the Combat Poverty Agency for the Irish Refugee Council. The authors are Dr Bryan Fanning, Department of Social Policy and Social Work at University College Dublin and Dr Angela Veale and Ms Dawn O'Connor of the Department of Applied Psychology at University College Cork.
Under "direct provision", introduced by the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Mr O'Donoghue, last year, asylum-seekers are sent to hostels, hotels, and bed-and-breakfasts. The cost of accommodation is paid for by the Department and asylum-seekers receive three meals a day. They are also entitled to a weekly welfare payment of £15 per adult and £7.50 per child. Some get an extra amount for a child under three at the discretion of the community welfare officer.
However, many hostels make no concessions to the needs of infants or to the diet of children or parents, serving only cereals and sausages, beans and chips, the researchers found. Mothers living in crowded conditions - usually only one room is provided per family - and having poor diets give up breast feeding and in almost all cases have to use the £7.50 per week per child to buy milk powder as well as clothes and nappies. As this amount is inadequate, all the family money may have to go towards feeding and clothing the baby.
Months of delay in getting medical cards mean they must pay for medicines also. One mother said she frequently gave her infant nothing but water in the bottle because the cost of nappies and a small amount of food for other members of the family left her with no money. A father explained how he and his wife had to deliberately skip feeding their twin babies sometimes because they did not want them to get used to being fed when hungry - and the hostel made no dietary provision for babies.
Adults and children who had no experience of Irish food find it difficult to eat what is provided in the hostels, which they complain is of poor quality.
As a result, some mothers continue to bottle-feed children long after they should have been weaned. The researchers found overcrowding with entire families confined to a room and with no privacy for any family members including teenage girls. Families are moved from room to room by staff making space for new arrivals. They find the movement within the hostels at what they see as the whim of staff particularly distressing. One family was told that if they did not stop complaining they would be moved in with a family they did not like.
Needless repression and intimidation by hostel staff emerged in some cases, the researchers said. This included shouting at parents in front of their children, refusal, in one case, to give a woman a glass of water and entering asylum-seekers' rooms and removing electric heaters.
In these circumstances some parents find it impossible to retain parental authority over their children who instead see the hostel staff as authority figures. Because children pick up some English at school they often have to act as go-betweens with the hostel staff.
Children have a high level of stress-related illnesses such as asthma, the researchers say, and are quite isolated socially. If invited to an Irish child's home they cannot invite the child back.
The research was conducted among asylum-seekers living in the Southern and South-Western Health Board regions. The report is titled Beyond the Pale: Asylum-Seeking Children and Social Exclusion in Ireland.