Children protesting at the Kinsale Road Direct Provision Centre in Cork in September 2014
…Of €16.
Kitty Holland, in The Irish Times, reports:
Over 1,000 asylum seekers will get their Christmas “bonus” this week – of €16.23 for adults and €13.26 for their children.
These asylum seekers are among 1.2 million welfare recipients who will get the “bonus”, worth 85 per cent of their weekly allowance, along with their regular payment, between now and Friday.
According to figures from the Department of Social Protection, some 1,170 recipients of the direct provision allowance – of €19.10 per week for adults and €15.60 for children, will be entitled to the “bonus”.
Christmas bonus for asylum seekers in direct provision is €16 (Kitty Holland, The Irish Times)
Previously: Gifts Direct
Direct provision is a pretty awful existence for those who are stuck in it. Particularly for children.
The one question the media never asks is why the stretches in direct provision are so long though.
Direct provision kind of makes sense for short spells (say a max of six months) and at the end of this point you either get sent home or are allowed to stay with normal access to labour market, benefits, housing assistance etc.
For whatever reasons both initial hearings and appeals take many years while they should really the whole process should take six months. This is not fair on asylum claimants (particularly their children) and it means a lot of suppliers of direct provision centres make a reasonable amount of money from the taxpayer.
So why does the process take so long? Anyone?
Lawyers.
http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/moving_country/asylum_seekers_and_refugees/the_asylum_process_in_ireland/applying_for_refugee_status_in_ireland.html
it’s a thorough enough assessment and appeals procedure. DOJ are relying on an applicant providing a lot of documentary evidence which I imagine would be difficult to provide. I would also imagine that the staff dealing with those assessments spend a lot of time trying to verify information given as credible or not. I would also imagine that if someone bothered to ask the staff of those dealing with clearing the backlog of applications they would call for a streamlining of the process and consistency in direct provision standards.
That is interesting, thanks.
Time for an amnesty and a complete re-haul of everything in direct provision from the ground up.
Oh can we at some point get rid of the racist constitutional amendment whereby children born in Ireland aren’t necessarily citizens too?