Recent newspaper reports suggest that the Government has decided to tighten up the Irish approach to applications for refugee status and international protection. The whole question of the relationship between asylum and international protection on the one hand, and inward migration on the other, is fraught with political and legal difficulty. Because Ireland has, unwisely in retrospect, acceded in full to provisions in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights relating to asylum, EU institutions have competence to determine the operation of asylum laws in member states, meaning we are not masters in our own house.
Nonetheless there is a need for honesty in our democratic dialogue on these issues. For instance, Ireland, while militarily neutral, has sought to support Ukraine by offering refuge to Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion. The number of Ukrainians seeking temporary protection in Ireland in the last three years has reached more than 112,000 and perhaps 80,000 still reside here. In the case of Ukrainians, Ireland’s generous welcome has been pared back in terms of welfare and accommodation entitlements. But there is as yet little or no debate as to whether Ireland will or should confer citizenship and the corresponding right of permanent residence to those Ukrainians who remain here.
There is a wider question that also remains largely unaddressed. Do asylum and international protection necessarily imply a right to remain permanently in Ireland regardless of conditions in countries of origin? Put another way, should we afford automatic pathways to citizenship to those who reside here as refugees or their foreign dependants for five, seven or 10 years?
These questions are sensitive in political terms. Politicians are often reluctant to speak about such matters for fear of being accused of xenophobia or racism. No such inhibitions seem to constrain some members of a putative populist conservatism who are delighted to highlight people’s concerns about migration for apparent political advantage.
In concept, refugee status and entitlements are temporary in nature. They do not of themselves accord rights of permanent settlement. No one can safely predict when the Ukraine war will end and on what terms. But if it were to end in the near future, would we be obliged to afford permanent residence rights to all those who sought temporary protection as distinct from refugee status? Will the answer to that question lie with Ireland or depend on the wishes of temporary protection holders?
Citizenship is not a mere right of residence in Irish law. Article 9 of the Constitution provides that “Fidelity to the nation and loyalty to the State are fundamental political duties of all citizens”. Citizenship carries with it obligations as well as rights, and these are the duties that flow from citizenship.
When I was minister for justice, we acted to end the scandal of sale of Irish citizenship for investment by foreigners. The very idea that someone could simply purchase the right, if resident in Ireland, to a full say in the country’s future, including the right to participate in referendums to alter our Constitution, and the right to decide through the ballot box day-to-day policies of our State, seemed repugnant. And so it came to an end.
With its end, we hoped to extinguish the notion that citizenship and nationality were commodities available to the wealthy. Strangely, some years later, residence rights for investment were reintroduced. A dubious auction of valuable rights seems wrong, especially when it enabled strangers to buy up Irish residences at a time of a major housing shortage.
While we are bound to accept freedom of movement by EU citizens to participate in our economy, Ireland is unusually lax, in European terms, in enforcing the obligations cast upon such EU migrants to become economically active and self-supporting. We have no real record or system for supervising EU migrants or even registering their whereabouts.
A newspaper last weekend reported that Ministers now consider that Ireland has become a “soft touch” for would-be asylum seekers, the large majority of whom are economic migrants. We have the fifth highest EU rate of asylum-seeking per capita.
If the Government is serious about controlling migration posing as asylum seeking, there are steps that it must take. Sweden has recently firmed up its path to citizenship. We should consider doing the same.
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We should at the very least revoke asylum status to those who travel between Ireland and the country they claim has persecuted them once they have been granted asylum status in Ireland. It seems ridiculous that someone with refugee status in Ireland can then travel freely back and forth to the country from which they have claimed to flee persecution to carry on business and form families there.
Above all we need honest, measured, clear-eyed and fair-minded public discourse on these issues. Otherwise we hand real concerns of decent Irish people as a political gift to the unscrupulous.