As a party to the 1951 UN Geneva Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, Ireland introduced the core principles of the Convention into domestic Irish law by means of the 1996 Refugee Act. This includes the provision to process applications from anyone who presents at an entry point to the State and seeks international protection. People who apply for protection in this way are offered the choice to cater for themselves while their application is processed or to enter into the State's Direct Provision system. The Department of Justice and Equality has responsibility for the international protection process in Ireland and in 2001 set up an internal agency called the Reception and Integration Agency (RIA) to administer the Direct Provision system.

Ireland also accepts persons seeking protection under the EU Relocation and Resettlement Programmes. Refugees who are accepted through these Programmes are entitled in principle to permanent settlement in Ireland and are accommodated in one of three Emergency Reception and Orientation Centres (EROCs) until their applications are fully processed. The Department of Justice and Equality also has responsibility for these Programmes in Ireland and set up another internal agency in 2015 called the Irish Refugee Protection Programme to administer them.
In Direct Provision, asylum seekers are assigned to one of 34 centres where they are provided with full board accommodation while their applications for international protection are being processed. Residents of Direct Provision centres have free movement within the State but must inform the centre to which they have been assigned of any overnight absences. Up to November 2017, residents did not have the right to work and were paid a weekly allowance of €21.60 per person. In May 2017, the Supreme Court ruled that the blanket prohibition on allowing asylum seekers to work is unconstitutional. The Court order was postponed for six months to provide the State time to address the situation. The Minister for Justice has committed to implement the Court ruling in early 2018.

When the Direct Provision system was introduced in 2000, it was expected that applications would be finalised in a number of months so that asylum seekers would not have to stay in the centres for any longer than that. The Direct Provision accommodation centres are dispersed across the State, some in city centre locations, others in isolated rural areas. Many are former hostels or disused hotels that have been re-opened under a contract framework with RIA. Families, including single parents with children, are accommodated together. Single people normally share rooms, often with two or more other people of the same gender but whom they would not have known before arriving at their designated centre. Some centres cater exclusively for single males and single females respectively, others for families, with a number of centres housing a mixture of families and single people.

Delays in the Process

Up until 31 December 2016, asylum seekers could seek permission to live legally in Ireland through applying for either category of international protection, namely refugee status or subsidiary protection. Those who did not qualify for protection status had, at the Minister's discretion, the possibility of being granted permission to remain in the State on other grounds including humanitarian considerations. If a person's initial application for refugee status was refused, they had the right to appeal to the Refugee Appeals Tribunal and following this, to seek judicial review of the decision. If this did not lead to a change in the decision to refuse their application, they could then apply for subsidiary protection, with the same review rights. Finally, if they did not qualify for refugee or protection status they could make representations to the Minister of Justice to explain why they should be allowed to stay in Ireland. With two possible appeals on each ground and a lengthy time frame in order to obtain permission to apply for judicial review, many applications took between three and five years, and sometimes longer, to finalise.

In 2014, the Working Group on the Protection Process including Direct Provision and Supports for Asylum Seekers was established under the chair of Justice McMahon. Its terms of reference were directed towards the identification of improvements to the existing system rather than the identification of alternatives. Also of particular note was the Government's commitment to legislate for a single application procedure to reduce the length of time that applicants must wait for a final decision.

Arising from recommendations in the Working Group Report (McMahon Report) of 2015, the Department reviewed the asylum application process. With effect from 1 January 2017, it replaced the previous multi-layered and sequential procedure with a streamlined process through which asylum seekers would have their applications for refugee status, subsidiary protection and permission to remain assessed at the same time, with a single right of appeal of any refusals. This is very much welcomed and I look forward to seeing this process being implemented efficiently. The Department envisaged that the new process would result in a final decision on the application process being made in a year or less in almost all cases. It has confirmed it received 2,930 applications for international protection in 2017 and that 1,700 first instance decisions were made by the International Protection Office in that year. I intend keeping in touch with the Department on this point.

My remit

Arising from Justice McMahon's recommendation that the Ombudsman should have the remit to examine complaints about the experience of residents of Direct Provision centres, the Department agreed that my Office would formally accept such complaints from 3 April 2017. While both my predecessor and I have consistently argued that my Office has always had this remit, I nevertheless welcome the Department's confirmation which removes any doubt about the issue. My remit covers any interaction residents of Direct Provision have with public service providers, including their experience within the centres themselves, but does not cover their applications for the right to live legally in Ireland. My Office has produced a Factsheet for people living in Direct Provision explaining my remit. The Factsheet is available on my Office's website (Ombudsman.ie) in the five most common languages of residents of the centres, namely English, Arabic, Urdu, Russian and French.

Engagement with RIA and IRPP

Following confirmation on my remit, my staff met with the heads of RIA and IRPP and agreed to periodically meet formally to discuss any issues arising. To maximise the effectiveness of this contact, my staff raise any issues in advance of the formal meetings to give RIA and IRPP the opportunity to deal with them so the meetings can focus on progress made rather than on discussing issues for the first time.

As part of its role in managing the asylum process, RIA established and chairs an Inter-Agency forum through which the various agencies responsible for providing services to asylum seekers meet to discuss any issues involved in providing those services. The agencies include RIA, the Direct Provision centres, the HSE, Tusla, local community Gardaí, local schools and a range of charities and NGOs who work with asylum seekers. The Inter-Agency meetings are held twice each year at a number of regional centres around the country which between them cover all the Direct Provision centres. My staff attended these meetings between Autumn 2016 and Spring 2017 to introduce themselves to the people involved with Direct Provision residents and to familiarise themselves with the issues arising through that service.

Programme of visits to Direct Provision and EROC centres

Since April my staff have undertaken a programme of visits to all Direct Provision centres and EROCs. The first group of visits were to the regional centres which hosted the Inter-Agency meetings where my staff took the opportunity to meet directly with residents to hear first-hand about any issues the residents had. My staff then systematically visited all the remaining regional centres through a series of trips where teams of two from my Office visited either two or three centres in the same region over a two-day period, depending on the distances involved. Those centres in or near to Dublin were visited on a same-day basis. In order to maximise awareness of our visits among residents, my staff arrange for publicity about the visits to be distributed at the centres a week in advance and contact local charities and/or NGOs who work with asylum seekers at the relevant centres. I have also highlighted my role in Direct Provision through my website and twitter account.

Engagement with the Ombudsman for Children's Office (OCO)

There are many families with children in Direct Provision which means the centres come under the remit of the OCO as well as mine. My staff work collaboratively with their counterparts in OCO, initially through a joint briefing for Direct Provision centre managers hosted by OCO and at which both I and Dr Niall Muldoon (Ombudsman for Children) explained our respective roles to the managers and took the opportunity to meet directly with them. My staff also briefed the managers on best practice in complaint handling. The staff of both our Offices also discuss our approach to the various issues we have noticed in our visits to the centres (OCO has also undertaken a programme of visiting the centres). To maximise our reach, each Office has taken complaints from residents relevant to the other's remit and transferred them for action so that the residents don't need to wait for a visit from my staff to make a complaint to my Office and vice versa.

Engagement with NGOs

There has been and continues to be significant engagement by NGOs and local charities with the residents of Direct Provision centres. In recognition of this avenue of contact with the residents, we hosted a briefing for residents' representatives at my Office to discuss how we might best work together for the residents' benefit. This includes giving advance notice of our visits to the centres to the local voluntary groups or NGOs so that they can raise awareness of the visits among the residents.

Complaints against the Direct Provision centres

We have found that the most effective way to deal with complaints about the centres themselves is to meet firstly with the residents, then immediately afterwards with the centre manager to discuss any issues raised by the residents. This approach has resulted in some issues being resolved on the day of our visit, some being clarified by the manager and others being left with the manager to consider further.

From their visits my staff have seen that the type of accommodation and provision of food varies between the different centres. Some have fully self-catering accommodation, where residents cook their own meals within self-contained residential units. Others have more limited cooking facilities, where residents can cook on hobs in communal cooking areas. The remainder provide canteen style food directly over food counters. Most of the centres also provide snack facilities, usually tea or coffee stations, sometimes along with fruit and ingredients for making sandwiches. Centres housing schoolchildren provide school lunches, either pre-packed or through providing parents with sandwich ingredients.

Complaints about food

Many of the complaints we get have been about food, both food quality and the way it is prepared or presented. There have also been complaints about the attitude of centre canteen staff, particularly where residents have specific dietary needs or ask for more food, the opening hours of canteens and the lack or absence of self-cooking facilities at many centres.
We have found that some complaints about food can have a cultural dimension. For example, in one centre a resident complained that the food was too spicy, while another at the same centre complained that it was not spicy enough. The residents involved were from different cultural backgrounds with different preferences regarding the spiciness of food. In that case the manager agreed to label the spice level of the various main dishes so residents could be aware of how spicy a dish was before they chose it.

We have found varying levels of practical engagement between centre management and residents at the different centres. With regard to food, some centres engage directly with residents on food preparation. This includes catering staff taking direct instruction from residents on preparation of particular ethnic food dishes. Other centres provide specific ethnic food dishes on a regular cycle, with the ethnic origin of most dishes varying in line with the ethnic composition of the resident population. We have engaged with the managers at those centres where there is less well established practical involvement of residents on food issues to inform them of the benefits we have seen follow from such practical involvement, both for catering staff as well as the residents. While engaging practically with residents seems to offer a way forward, we continue to get complaints about food on our visits.

Complaints about the attitude of centre staff to residents

We have found that some of these complaints can have a cultural or communication dimension. For example, we got a complaint from a resident who was deeply reluctant to ask for more food as doing so would be regarded as begging in her culture. Centre staff were unaware that the woman was not getting enough food, or of her reasons for not asking for more. We agreed with the centre that, when serving her food, staff would proactively ask her if she wanted more which would mean she would get enough food without her having to face the cultural difficulty of asking for more.

Complaints about staff rudeness or inappropriate communication can often be challenging to seek to resolve. Some have arisen over cultural differences between staff and residents over what is regarded as shouting by one person and normal assertive communication by another. Other complaints have been about once-off verbal altercations where there were neither witnesses nor contemporary records that would assist with objective examination of the complaints. Sometimes it can be a case of a centre manager reminding a staff member just to be aware of a resident's particular cultural background when dealing with them.

Lack of cooking facilities

RIA is currently in the process of providing cooking facilities for residents at a number of centres. My staff have seen installation of cooking facilities at several centres, where it has been overwhelmingly positively received by residents. There is variation between the centres on the practical issues, with some providing uncooked food for the residents to prepare, while others provide the facilities but not the food. The view of my staff, based on feedback they have got, is that this is the single most important issue for residents.

Lack of other facilities, including childcare

Direct Provision centres are run on the basis of contracts agreed between the centres and RIA which do not require centres to provide childcare facilities, such as crèches or play areas. However, what we have seen is that some centres, either through the involvement of local groups or particularly proactive centre management, do provide crèches and play areas while not being specifically obliged to do so under their contracts. This means that the facilities available to residents can vary from centre to centre, much to the frustration of the residents of centres at which the facilities are not provided. While I fully understand the residents' frustration, I can equally understand the position of a centre which fully complies with its contractual obligations.

There is similar centre to centre variation in the provision of communication facilities, with my staff getting complaints about inconsistency in the quality of television and Wi-Fi signals. Poor signal strength is often unavoidable for simple infrastructural reasons such as the physical location of a centre or the thickness of its walls, etc. This is nevertheless another source of frustration for those residents who are aware that their peers in other centres get a much better television and Wi-Fi service than they do. As with childcare facilities, given that the centres provide facilities as per contract, I can understand the limitations on their ability to resolve this type of complaint.

Communication issues between residents and staff

My staff have found that complaints often arise due to communication issues rather than an underlying problem per se. In several centres residents complained about issues that the managers were not aware of when my staff spoke to them. For example, a resident complained about the lack of hand wash at their centre. It turned out that a staff member was available at a designated time each week to talk to residents about such specific housekeeping issues, but the resident was not aware of this. The contracts with RIA provide for regular meetings between centre staff and residents to discuss day to day issues that arise in centres. My staff have found that these structured regular meetings take place at a number of centres, and generally work very well when they do. Managers in other centres have reported that they used to convene meetings with residents but, over time, attendance rates dropped, eventually leading to the meetings lapsing due a lack of ongoing engagement by the residents.

In some of these cases the managers have found that informal, ad hoc engagement with the residents on day to day issues can work just as well as the structured meetings as a source of dialogue. One manager makes a point of taking her afternoon coffee from the machine in the residents' common room which she has found very useful as a mechanism for hearing about residents' issues. Some residents have made similar comments to my staff.

My staff have observed that this lack of engagement by residents appears to be more pronounced at the male only centres than it is at the female only or family centres. Managers have cited cases where agreed arrangements were made in response to complaints from residents only for there to be a very limited uptake of those arrangements. This has happened at a number of centres for trips or events for which transport would have been booked but where only a handful of residents turned up at the designated time. In another case the residents complained to the centre manager about their lack of opportunity to participate in sport, specifically to play football. The manager used her local contacts to get access to a pitch but only two residents turned up at the designated time.

Perhaps this trend of limited engagement may be linked to a sense of institutional lethargy among residents who have been living in Direct Provision for, in many cases, several years. As Ombudsman what I look at is how reasonably people have been treated. In this context, while I understand the frustration of those residents who do turn up for agreed events, I am also mindful of the efforts that the centres are making to provide outlets for the residents in their centres.

Fear of complaint persecution

Many residents have told my staff that they were reluctant to complain about issues at their centres for fear of being singled out as troublemakers or persecuted in some other way for having complained. Similar fears were expressed about complaining to RIA, including a perception that complaining could lead to a person being involuntarily transferred to another centre. I deal with this point below in the context of my staff's discussions with RIA on how requests for transfers are dealt with. While my staff did not see any evidence of such persecution, the issue remains a matter of concern for some residents. However, my staff have reported that the frequency of residents expressing this fear of persecution seems to have declined as our programme of visiting all the centres has continued. Perhaps residents are becoming more assured on this point and therefore feel more confident in making complaints.

Complaints against the Reception and Integration Agency (RIA)

The most common type of complaint against RIA is about refusals of requests from residents to transfer from one Direct Provision centre to another. Most refusals are because there is no suitable capacity at the centre to which the resident has asked to transfer. I accept that refusal of a request to transfer on capacity grounds is reasonable. However, I also think it is reasonable to hold applications from a person or family refused a transfer for capacity reasons so that they can be accommodated at their preferred centre if and when a suitable vacancy arises. My staff engaged with RIA on this and I am pleased to report that RIA have started to take this approach. We are continuing to engage with RIA on the issue of involuntary transfers where residents can now ask RIA to explain to those individuals who are being moved for breaching House Rules, why it is that they are being moved from their centre.

My staff have dealt with complaints about refusal of transfer requests for reasons other than centre capacity. RIA has told my staff that its policy is to keep families together and to accommodate people close to education and training opportunities where practicable. We have dealt with a number of complaints where requests for transfers to improve access to medical treatment, to reunite with family, or to avail of education or training opportunities have been refused. RIA's position on these cases is that the residents have not demonstrated that there were exceptional circumstances in their situations that would justify a transfer. In a number of cases we have accepted that transfers were not necessary as appropriate medical services or access to training and education opportunities were available locally. In other cases we were satisfied that the residents had made reasonable cases to justify a transfer and got RIA to agree to overturn its initial refusal of their requests. One of these cases involved a young asylum seeker whose request to be transferred to Dublin to reunite with family and continue her education was refused as RIA was not satisfied her circumstances were exceptional. Following contact from my Office, RIA agreed to grant the request on humanitarian grounds.

I visited a Direct Provision centre in Waterford City as part of my Office's regional visit there on 14 and 15 September 2017. A resident showed me a letter RIA had sent him giving him six weeks to vacate the centre on the grounds that there was a Deportation Order outstanding against him. The resident had been getting instructions on a monthly basis from the Gardaí to present himself for deportation at a specified Garda station, instructions he had complied with. Each month he presented himself, he was given another letter acknowledging his compliance with the instruction and told to present himself again the following month.

The letter from RIA had upset the man greatly as he felt he had done everything asked of him but was now facing destitution as, with a Deportation Order outstanding against him, he had no legal entitlement to live in Ireland and therefore was not entitled to avail of State housing or homelessness services. Other residents in that centre had also got similar letters from RIA. My staff engaged with RIA on these letters who confirmed that it had issued 23 in total to residents across different centres. I am happy to report that RIA has confirmed that, while it does write to residents who have Deportation Orders outstanding against them, this is to encourage them to agree to voluntary deportation and it will not forcibly remove any of the 23 residents concerned from Direct Provision. It has issued further letters to a number of those residents but I am satisfied that these letters are an effort to facilitate voluntary deportation and are not an attempt by RIA to forcibly remove anyone from Direct Provision. I can also confirm that the man I spoke to was happy to move back to his native country through voluntary deportation and, following contact with my staff, was provided with the details of the relevant unit in the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service to arrange his repatriation.

Complaints against the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection

Most complaints against the Department come from refusals to approve Exceptional Needs Payments (ENP) for, most commonly, transport costs to attend medical or legal appointments or to attend education or training courses. Exceptional Needs Payments are designed to cover unforeseen or exceptional situations where once-off expenses that cannot reasonably be predicted arise. The Direct Provision weekly allowance of €21.60 is not enough to cover the cost of transport, so residents apply to their local Designated Person (formerly the Community Welfare Officer) when the need arises.

My staff have found the way ENP applications from Direct Provision residents are handled varies, with several Designated Persons basing themselves in centres, others dealing with residents directly at their local offices or over the phone, while some deal exclusively with written applications. Some Designated Persons approve applications in advance while others approve retrospectively on production of bus ticket receipts etc. but most ENP applications to attend medical or legal appointments or to attend education or training courses are approved. However, my staff have noticed some exceptions to this, with a small number of Designated Persons in specific places habitually refusing applications that are normally granted elsewhere. This is a huge source of frustration for the residents concerned who are aware that their peers in most (almost all) other centres regularly get approval for applications that are equally regularly denied to them. We have engaged with the Department at a national level on this point which has addressed this issue and I am happy to report that my staff have succeeded in getting cases of this type resolved.
We have also dealt with a number of cases where applications for ENPs were refused on the grounds that the residents had access to their own transport and therefore did not meet the conditions needed for ENPs to be granted. While the allowance of €21.60 is not enough to cover transport costs, I accept that any residents who have enough means to source their own transport do not need support from the State to pay their travel costs so I am satisfied that the Department's decisions to refuse ENP applications in these circumstances are reasonable.

Complaints against the HSE

Most complaints against the HSE come from requests to access medical services, or from delays in awarding or refusals to approve applications for medical cards. As the HSE has been under my Office's remit since its foundation, we have well established lines of communication that are working well to help our examination of complaints against the HSE.
One type of complaint arises from the limited amount of dental treatment covered by the medical card, for example two fillings per person etc. Many residents of the EROCs in particular need dental treatment much in excess of what is covered by the medical card. My staff have put these residents, and others in the Direct Provision centres who complained to us, in touch with the Office of the Principal Dental Surgeon who has the discretion to consider applications for dental treatment not covered by the medical card. At the time of writing my staff are not aware of any residents who have engaged with that Office and are not satisfied with the outcome.
Another source of complaints has been about clinical decisions made by local GPs, most commonly about contended inadequate prescriptions. Unfortunately I do not have the remit to examine the clinical judgement exercised by medical professionals, but my staff have been assured by the HSE that it would investigate should a pattern of consistent complaints about professional standards of any particular GMS doctor(s) arise.

Emergency Reception and Orientation Centres

In 2015, the Irish Government approved the establishment of the Irish Refugee Protection Programme (IRPP) and pledged that Ireland would accept up to 4,000 persons seeking protection under the EU Relocation and United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) Resettlement Programmes. Under the UN Programme, people arriving in Ireland from Lebanon have already been granted refugee status. Under the EU Programme, people arrive in Ireland from Greece and Italy before their status is determined. It is up to the International Protection Office in the Department of Justice and Equality to process claims for international protection. People arriving in Ireland under these Programmes are provided with shelter and full board accommodation in the EROCs.

My staff have visited all three EROCs and came across similar issues to those that arose in Direct Provision centres. There were complaints about food, standard of accommodation, access to healthcare and dental care. As with the issues raised in the Direct Provision centres in relation to the provision of dental care, we have referred these people to the Office of the Principal Dental Surgeon. Also, in one EROC in particular, there was a feeling amongst residents of social exclusion and segregation from the local community.

The issues causing most concern to me are what the residents told my staff regarding the unrealistic expectations they say they were given before they arrived in Ireland, namely that they would be housed in local communities within a matter of weeks and have all their health issues addressed. My staff noticed that one centre appears to run more smoothly than the others with my staff being told that many of the residents assigned to this centre are housed in the local community, in the main, within three months of arriving in Ireland. We put these points to the IRPP which strongly challenges the accuracy of the position as presented to us. My staff also reported that the residents in that centre are incredibly satisfied with the service, support and care they are receiving there. We observed a huge effort from centre management, staff and the local authority to support the recently arrived refugees and to help them integrate into the community.

We have met with the IRPP to discuss our concerns regarding the differences in the running of the EROCs and the issues that my staff have identified. The IRPP acknowledged our concerns and confirmed that they are taking steps to address those issues. We have agreed to meet again following our next round of visits to the EROCs. I welcome the positive interaction with the IRPP to date and the action it is taking on these issues.

Refugee

A refugee is someone who, according to the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, has had to leave their country of origin because of "a well-founded fear of persecution because of reasons including their race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion". Under the Convention, an officially recognised refugee must be afforded protection, access to services and the right to work in another convention country.

Asylum Seeker

An asylum seeker is a person seeking to be granted protection as a refugee outside their country of origin, and is awaiting the determination of his/her status. While their application is being processed, they have a right to protection but not to the freedoms that refugees have. If granted this status, the person is recognised as a refugee and is no longer an asylum seeker. In Ireland, the international protection process is a legal system which decides who qualifies as a refugee and is then entitled to remain in Ireland and under its protection. Those judged not to be refugees can be deported back to their home countries. Others may be granted permission to remain or subsidiary protection.
The terms asylum-seeker and refugee are often confused: an asylum-seeker is someone who claims he or she is a refugee, but whose claim has not yet been definitively determined.

Complaints about Direct Provision

April - December 2017