Greg Daly
Irish opposition to US President Donald Trump’s clampdown on refugees is hypocritical as long as a blind eye is turned to our own system, priests who have campaigned on the issue have said.
“We can all get up in arms and rightly so about the outrageous actions of the President of the United States,” Msgr John Byrne, parish priest of Portlaoise, told The Irish Catholic, “but really, there is a touch of hypocrisy about it if we can tolerate a direct provision system that just has gone on and on and has treated all people badly, but none more than the children caught up in the system.”
Describing Ireland’s detention centres for asylum applicants as “horrible places”, Msgr Byrne said he knows people who have been in the system for six and seven years, adding that while the process has been improving, the Government has been “dragged into the improvement”.
Enthusiasm
“I don’t believe it’s done with any enthusiasm, because the bottom line still is – and this is maybe a comment on ourselves – there are no votes in it,” he said.
Msgr Byrne’s comments follow a High Court ruling which found that a woman who spent several years in direct provision with her family is entitled to compensation over delays in processing her asylum application. Mr Justice Michael White ruled that the delay was contrary to the State’s duties under the Constitution and EU law.
No rights
Fr Alan Hilliard, author of Open Heart, Open Hands: Welcoming Migrants to Ireland, said: “Courts both in America and Ireland are basically the last recourse for people who have no rights to gain their rights,” and that as things stand, “the present realities around migration would highlight the fact that the Universal Charter of Human Rights is basically null and void.”
Expressing a hope that the High Court decision would prove “a shake-up that’s needed” Fr Hilliard told The Irish Catholic detention centres for asylum seekers are a tool used across the world to discourage migration.
“We do pride ourselves on human rights, and say it over and over again across the world that we’re known for our human rights, but this is a total violation of human rights at every level,” he said.