A package of measures on asylum and immigration issues announced last night by the Government was denounced as ungenerous and cobbled together.
The Labour Party's spokesman on Justice, Mr Brendan Howlin, said the policy "shambles" condemned last month by the Minister of State, Ms Liz O'Donnell, would continue.
The Irish Refugee Council said it regretted the Government announcement did not include changes to ensure that all asylum-seekers would have "fair and full and proper legal representation" when their claims for refugee status were being processed.
One of the members of the refugee appeals authority, Mr Peter Finlay SC, last month said the rights of asylum-seekers were being trammelled due to shortcomings in the processing of applications for asylum.
Father Tony O'Riordan, of the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice, said the proposals were not compassionate or generous.
He said plans for short-term reception centres and replacing cash payments with in-kind provision which may include food vouchers would remove choice.
"This is much more like cobbled-together measures than comprehensive ones. It falls far short of a policy that takes into view something new in relation to this issue.
"Its focus seems to be on control and quick processing of asylum applications followed by deportations. In the meantime, it seems people would be almost corralled into quarantine."
Mr Donncha O'Connell, the director of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, said the Government's package was "vague on potentially progressive elements and specific on the deterrent aspects such as fingerprinting asylum-seekers and tackling trafficking".
He was critical of the Government's commitment to consult relevant interests on setting up an agency next year to deal with immigration and asylum matters.
"The level of consultation between the Department of Justice and non-governmental organisations dealing with asylum and refugee issues has been so poor that it is arguably worth considering the appointment of an independent mediator to act as a go-between," he said.
Mr O'Connell said the Government's commitment to avoid the evil of racism by endorsing steps taken by gardai fell short of a comprehensive policy in the area.
"The anti-racism measures are tokenistic when compared to other parts of the policy which appear to be strongly informed by anti-foreigner sentiment," he said.
Mr Howlin said the plan failed to take into account not only the needs of the economy, but the moral obligation as a State with a long history of emigration.
"The obvious and rational response to the current situation would have been to regularise the position of people awaiting adjudication on their asylum applications, an effective amnesty, and then to put in place a progressive and humane immigration policy, involving a quota system," he said.
Refugee groups are likely to be disappointed by the failure to meet their calls for access to training for some 2,100 asylum-seekers eligible to work on the basis of the length of time they have been in the State.
The Association of Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Ireland has repeatedly called this right "farcical" in the absence of any rights through FAS for language training or other skills.
The package is also likely to disappoint the Irish Commission for Justice and Peace, which called recently for the Government to create a separate channel to allow immigrants, other than asylum-seekers, to enter on humanitarian grounds.