Asylum-seekers should be offered education and skills training to combat isolation, an organisation working with refugee applicants has said.
The Support Organisation for the Needs of Asylum-Seekers (SONAS) also wants more readily available State-funded legal advice to help people with their claims to remain permanently in the State as refugees.
SONAS's chairman, Father Brian Moore, said its outreach workers had found that asylum-seekers in Dublin, Limerick, Wexford and Cork experienced depression, isolation and racial abuse.
Asylum-seekers cannot work or access education or training while their claims are being processed. Father Moore, speaking at the presentation of the organisation's first annual report to the Tánaiste, Ms Harney, said it took on average one year for claims to be finalised, although many people were waiting three to four years for decisions on applications to remain in the State on humanitarian grounds.
"A lot of people are isolated and we would like some provision of education and skills training of people in the asylum process to enhance their quality of life and allow them to spend this time in the country in a productive way," he said.
Asylum-seekers immediately enter a legal process with which they are generally ill-equipped to cope. "People need more access to the expertise of the Refugee Legal Service. Not having access means people are entering into a legal process without adequate representation and in turn don't do justice to themselves in terms of their applications for protection," said Father Moore.