Policy on refugees draws sharp criticism from bishops

The Irish Bishops' Conference has renewed its attack on Government policy on asylum-seekers and refugees, criticising new security and policing measures, including the stationing of foreign police officials in the Republic.

In a statement yesterday, the conference's committee on asylum-seekers and refugees said the Government's failure to cut processing times for asylum applications to six months, as promised, had undermined the development of a "humane and sustainable" policy. Apart from swelling the backlog of unprocessed applications, it had given rise to unnecessary accommodation pressures.

The Catholic bishops also rebutted the argument of the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, that regularising the position of certain categories of asylum-seekers would merely attract more people to the State. "The present situation, in which a large and growing number of asylum applicants remain unprocessed, in many cases for several years, sends a much louder signal of encouragement to prospective asylum-seekers than once-off regularisation measures would do."

The bishops added: "Cutting down processing times would send a clear contrary signal, and do so in a more humane and cost-effective way than such highly dubious measures as importing police officials from the states from which asylum-seekers originate."

The case for "regularising" the position of certain asylum-seekers was contained in a statement issued by the bishops on April 26th. Commenting on the proposal, Mr O'Donoghue said that any such amnesty would send a message that people were "entitled to come here and abuse the asylum process".

The bishops' strongest concerns were over new security and policing measures and the lack of safeguards in the case of detention. The stationing of two Romanian police officers in Dublin to facilitate repatriations was described as "deeply worrying". Concern was also expressed at reports that Nigerian police officers were to be based in the Republic. A spokesman for the Minister said there was no basis to such reports. However, the Government had begun discussions with the Nigerian authorities on drawing up a readmission agreement.

The bishops noted that since their last statement was issued the backlog of unprocessed cases had risen to 12,400. Resources in this area were falling short of what was required, with 1,000 new applicants arriving each month to be processed by a system which was capable of dealing with no more than 700 people in one month.

On accommodation, the statement noted that if the six-month processing target had been met on time "the situation would now be much more manageable and the aura of continuing emergency dissipated". Meeting the target would reduce the number of asylum-seekers requiring accommodation by up to 50 per cent.

The Minister's spokesman said that funding to recruit a "very significant number" of additional staff to process applications was due to be approved shortly.