Paul Keenan
The former director of the Irish Episcopal Commission for Emigrants has described the Irish Church’s lack of a voice on the integration of migrants as “abysmal”.
Speaking to the Irish Catholic this week in the wake of new figures, showing that the number of asylum seekers placed into direct provision last year doubled over numbers for 2014, Fr Alan Hilliard lamented the lack of a coherent and clear voice from the Church on Ireland’s treatment of migrants.
“The Church has been abysmal on this,” he said. “In terms of a voice from the Church on the morality of our treatment of migrants, it simply is not there.”
This absence, Fr Hilliard added, was at odds with the willingness of ordinary Catholics to do more in terms of helping migrants, not least in response to the daily images in news broadcasts of Syrian refugees fleeing the horrors of the conflict in their country.
“Local communities have done a lot in parishes,” he acknowledged, adding however, “there is a gulf between the goodwill of the people and initiatives in official circles.”
Concept
This, Fr Hilliard said, includes Government for whom, “the concept of integration simply hasn’t been put to the fore”. Latest figures from the Reception and Integration Agency reveal that 2,828 new asylum applicants were placed into direct provision accommodation in 2015 – 1,687 more than in 2014.
Pointing, meanwhile, to the newly launched campaign by the Immigrant Council of Ireland to encourage migrant participation in civic and political events, Fr Hilliard said that “anything that reaches out to migrants is very good”.
The Immigrant Council’s campaign is billed as a series of ‘one-stop-shop’ events across Ireland aimed at reaching both EU and non-EU migrants. Such events will take place in Dublin, Dundalk, Navan, Newbridge, Carlow, Limerick, Kerry and Cork to April 2017 and aim to increase voter turnout and encourage greater participation with the life of their local communities.