Mags Gargan
Eugene Quinn, director, Jesuit Refugee Service The Government’s announcement to increase the Direct Provision Allowance (DPA) for asylum seeker children by just €6, has been described as ‘paltry’ and as falling far short of the recommendations of NGOs tasked with identifying improvements to the system.
Among the recommendations of the report from the Government-appointed working group published last June, was an increase of the adult allowance from €19.10 to €38.74 and the child allowance from €9.60 to €29.80.
Eugene Quinn, National Director of the Jesuit Refugee Service Ireland (JRS), said that while he welcomed an “increase in the sense that is the first time any of the direct provision allowances have been increased since the year 2000”, the extra €6 “falls far short of what was recommended by the working group”.
Dignity
“It must be remembered that the rationale behind the increase in the child allowance was in recognition that people in direct provision don’t receive child benefit payments and have no right to work. It was to allow them to live with greater dignity and meet additional costs. An extra €6 per child won’t address that,” he said.
Tanya Ward of the Children’s Rights Alliance said the increase “will barely cover the cost of a bottle of Calpol” and June Tinsley of Barnardos said it was “difficult to see the justification for such a paltry increase”. Grainia Long from the ISPCC said the “modest increase” “falls short of what children need, and will ultimately mean that children in direct provision remain woefully unsupported by the Irish State in 2016”.