IMPACT members may withdraw co-operation from the new payments system for asylum-seekers because they receive fewer than half the entitlements of other welfare recipients.
The union has decided at its annual conference to ballot community welfare officers for industrial action over what delegates see as the "discriminatory practices" now in force.
The vice-chairman of the Eastern Health Board branch, Mr Pat Bolger, said at yesterday's debate in Tralee that the £15 a week allowance to asylum-seekers who have been placed in hostels around the State contrasted poorly with allowances of between £25 and £53 a week given to Irish nationals in hostel accommodation.
"The denial of rent allowances isolates people and directly contradicts stated Government policy on refugees," he said.
The only group of Irish welfare recipients on £15 a week were people in hospital with no other resources, who could use it "to buy a bottle of Lucozade, or a few biscuits". Since 1996 it had been State policy to ensure anyone living in the community received at least £25 a week discretionary income on top of rent subsidies or other allowances.
The new policy was exacerbating the accommodation crisis, Mr Bolger said. "Unlike the local homeless people who are eagerly encouraged to leave hostels, asylum-seekers are refused the opportunity to take up rent allowances in the private rented sector." The new policy would also "block up beds for later arrivals".
Mr Bolger reckoned the average cost of accommodating asylum-seekers at £60 a week. When the extra administrative costs were taken into account, there were no savings to the Exchequer from the new scheme.
The social welfare regime "never envisaged large numbers of non-nationals claiming", but if people were treated differently because of their place of origin, "we are definitely entering very dodgy territory", Mr Bolger said.
The chairman of the community workers' section, Mr Des Stone, said the question of who issued the instructions to treat asylum-seekers had never been satisfactorily resolved. It had emerged from an inter-departmental working group last March, which included senior civil servants from Departments such as Justice and Foreign Affairs. It ran against the whole ethos of the social welfare system.
IMPACT's national secretary, Mr Kevin Callinan, said the new system was probably open to legal challenge, but this could take years to process. Delegates voted overwhelmingly to sanction a strike ballot.
Mr Bolger hoped the Government would change its policy as a result of the union decision, but his members were fully prepared to carry through with the strike "if we have to".