The spectacle of gardai entering buses and trains from Northern Ireland to search for illegal immigrants is unsavoury and unexpected in this State. Yet it is not the checking of immigrants that is unsavoury so much as the lack of due process in dealing with them. Those who are turned away by immigration officers have no right to a lawyer and no right to an appeal. Neither have they a right to a translation service.
The Refugee Act was passed by the Oireachtas over a year ago. One of its aims was to ensure that people seeking entry to the State as asylum seekers should have the right to make their case and to appeal in the event of a refusal. The Bruton Government failed to implement the Act despite the glaring need for a speedy and just procedure to assess claims for asylum. Instead it compounded its failure when, on her last day as Minister for Justice, Mrs Nora Owen introduced the regulations under which non-EU citizens attempting to enter the State from the UK to seek asylum, are being sent back home. There was no consultation with bodies such as the Irish Refugee Council or the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). A request by the UNHCR to the present Government to suspend the regulations until their implications have been assessed, has been rejected.
Meanwhile, little has been heard of the Refugee Act as fears increase that the Government has no intention of implementing it in its present form once a court action against it is resolved. That Act, if implemented, would provide the due process currently lacking to distinguish between illegal immigrants and genuine refugees. It would bring this State into line with international conventions and treaties. It would represent a fair and effective approach to the refugee issue in place of the present panic measures.
A failure to implement the Act would be shameful. It is often suggested that Ireland, as a once-colonised country, has a special affinity with other countries which have had the same experience. The first flush of a refugee "problem" has revealed much of this attitudinising for the empty rhetoric it so often is. The Government may plead that it has appointed an extra 72 staff to speed up the processing of asylum applications. It may argue that a High Court judge has been appointed to hear appeals against the refusal of refugee status.
That is all true and should have been done by the previous Government. But in order to avail of these procedures an asylum seeker has first to get into the State - and it is here that rights to legal representation, appeals and translation services are lacking. Refugees have often lost everything. Grossly abused in their own countries, they are at least entitled to a full, fair and comprehensive hearing when they come to this one.
There are two sets of interests to be taken into account here. First, Ireland's, as a State which wants to help genuine refugees to a realistic extent, compatible with its size, and which wants to abide by international obligations and treaties. Second, there are the interests of those seeking asylum, who want an opportunity to put their case. If the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, can reconcile these two sets of interests, he will have done a good day's work - but is he willing to try?