The "endless delay" in granting asylum-seekers the right to work and in setting up a refugee advisory board highlights the failure of the Government's refugee policy, according to the Justice Commission of the Conference of Religious in Ireland (CORI).
The CORI director, Father Sean Healy, said he was extremely disappointed with the statement on behalf of the Government made by the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, at the UN conference in Durban.
Measures to ease the pressure on asylum-seekers agreed under the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness (PPF) had still not been implemented, he said, and the Government's actions fell far short of its promises.
"I think there are some very serious issues that have been glossed over," Father Healy said of Mr O'Donoghue's statement.
"He did not recognise the reality of racism in Ireland and that there's a problem that needs to be addressed in our response to it.
"I would have liked him first of all to have recognised the reality of the situation for asylum-seekers and refugees in Ireland. I would have liked to have seen him recognise that there's only one race, the human race, and to have acknowledged that it's not tenable for Ireland or the EU to have a policy based on developing a fortress to keep people out."
In a statement for Racial Justice Sunday, an initiative by churches in Britain and Ireland held yesterday, CORI's Justice Commission said that in the decades ahead more and more people from poorer countries in the world's south were likely to move to the wealthier north.
Noting that many of the EU's members were former colonial powers in Africa and elsewhere, the commission said that Ireland should use its special history to take a more proactive stand on racism and asylum within the European Union.
Father Healy said the Government had so far "played nothing like a proactive role within the EU" on the issue.
By not granting the right to work to asylum-seekers, the Government was "storing up bigger problems for themselves for the future".
Backing from IBEC, ICTU, CORI and the INOU for the right to work showed the Government was out of step with the consensus.
"There is a very simple thing that could be done to show the Government's commitment. It is long since overdue and has been promised endlessly by the Minister, and that is the setting up of the refugee advisory board, which was agreed under the PPF, which is already in the law of the land, but has not yet been put in place," he said.