Donal O’Kelly
After 25 years in service, the term ‘Direct Provision’ (DP) was quietly dropped by the Programme for Government released in January 2025. The new government pulled IPAS (International Protection Accommodation Service) back into the Department of Justice after a sojourn in the one-term Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth under Green Party minister Roderic O’Gorman. There was much promised under that government, including a White Paper ‘Ending Direct Provision’ issued on 26 February 2021 that pledged the coercive system of institutional and profit-making confinement would be a thing of the past by the end of 2024.
Ultimately nothing was delivered. Even the basic UN duty to accommodate people seeking asylum was reneged upon. The excuse given by the government was that the influx of Ukrainian refugees following Russia’s invasion, one year after the White Paper was issued, made delivering on these commitments untenable (as part of the EU’s ‘Temporary Protection Directive’ Ukrainians arriving in Ireland were given refugee status, giving them a suite of rights and access to services denied to those seeking asylum from other national contexts).
By December 2024, the target date for ‘Ending Direct Provision’, there were 3000 asylum seekers (non-Ukrainian) consigned to life under the sky. Tents were given to asylum seekers by volunteers and they were told to pitch them wherever they could, even as temperatures fell below zero in winter and they were repeatedly subjected to racist attacks and moved on by Gardaí.
Original Sin
‘Direct Provision and Dispersal’ was made operational by John O’Donoghue, Fianna Fáil Minister for Justice on 10 April 2000, after more than two years of behind-doors preparation involving multiple departments. Tony Blair’s Home Secretary Jack Straw had warned O’Donoghue in advance of the publication of his UK White Paper ‘Fairer, Faster, Firmer’ in June 1998 that he would be introducing a voucher system for direct provision in the UK, where access to support was to be based on coercion, requiring asylum seekers to agree to dispersal to avoid destitution.
O’Donoghue broadcast the warning far and wide amid rising racism and growing anti-migrant sentiment in Ireland, with unsubstantiated headlines such as “Refugee Rapists on the Rampage” (The Irish Star, 13 June 1997) appearing daily. O’Donoghue was not averse to fanning the flames, citing increasing refugee applications as causing a lamentable rise in racism. ARASI, the Association of Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Ireland, put the number of racist attacks in the Dublin area in the month of May 1998 at fourteen, many in broad daylight. The resonance with the recent increase in racist violence is alarming and distressing, not least because recent attacks take place in a much more diverse country and after almost three decades of anti-racist organising.
In the late 1990s few prominent in public life pointed out that seventy-five years after independence from Britain (in the south at least), the Dublin government was implementing British refugee reception policy with cosmetic variations. O’Donoghue made much of his rejection of a voucher system, which the British Home Office soon found inoperable in any case. But sending asylum seekers to institutional accommodation in remote parts of Ireland with no right to work and scant public transport confined people within a travel limit of three-times-daily set meals, had the desired effect on those seeking asylum – isolating them from society – and by some accounts acting as a ‘deterrent’ as designed.
Cross-border bus and rail checks had been fast-tracked by previous Fine Gael Minister for Justice, Nora Owen. She introduced an amendment to the ‘Aliens Order’ on her last day in office 25 June 1997, “for the purpose of determining whether he or she should be given leave to land”. Stepping from bus onto soil carried a risk of criminality. Racial profiling in ID searches became commonplace, notably in cross-border travel by bus and rail.
ARASI made intercessions about the worsening situation to visiting UNHCR representative Hope Hanlan, then based in their London office, to little avail. The blanket ban on asylum seekers’ right to work continued under the 1996 Refugee Act. The Republic of Ireland was the only EU state to impose such a measure, until the Supreme Court finally ruled it unconstitutional in May 2017. No right to work, for as long as it took the state to process your case, with a weekly ‘comforts payment’ of £15 (converted to €19.10 on currency change 2002), consigned anyone in DP to penury.
Many of those people who survived years of “cruel limbo” and enforced idleness are now in their forties and fifties, possibly even older in some cases. NGOs, academic researchers, and mental health care workers have documented the long-term trauma induced by such imposition of powerlessness and advocated for government action. These groups and organisations have particularly looked at the psychological impact on children growing up in Direct Provision. The long term impacts of Direct Provision, not only on the individuals and families who experienced this inhumane but also on our communities as whole remains to be seen but its legacy is certain to haunt us in as yet unforeseen ways.
Resonances
The January 2025 Programme for Government uses the word “firmer” four times in two pages when discussing immigration. It notes that “a fair but firmer system” is being adopted, echoing Britain’s 1998 ‘Fairer, Faster, Firmer’ policy framework. It is perhaps instructive to compare the 1998 and 2005 Irish policy frameworks.
Number of successful applicants:
Then: Minister for Justice John O’Donoghue quoted by Irish Times 9 May 1998: “he expects up to 90% of cases to be rejected.”
Now: Minister Jim O’Callaghan on RTE radio’s This Week 16 February 2025: “this year already, in January, over 80% of applications were rejected at first instance.”
Conclusion: Due process was/is interfered with, as the Ministers made it clear their preference was/is based on results – in effect a quota system – rather than justice.
Duration of case consideration:
Then: O’Donoghue in Dáil, 2 December 1997: “It will take approximately six months to deal with an application.”
Now: O’Callaghan, according to Department of Justice analysis of labour market access “currently under review” reported in Irish Times 18 July 2025: “most international protection applicants (IPAs) would have a first-instance decision within five months”.
Conclusion: People who spent up to eleven years in DP unable to plan their futures until finding a way through the IPO labyrinth are likely to view the minister’s confidence with some scepticism.
Economic Migrancy:
Then: O’Donoghue on the publication of ‘Fairer, Faster, Firmer’ 27 July 1998: “developments in the UK on the matters dealt with in the White Paper are of particular significance to us in Ireland and must be taken into account in our ongoing review of policy in this area.”
Jack Straw in his introduction to ‘Fairer, Faster, Firmer’: “there is no doubt that large numbers of economic migrants are abusing the system by claiming asylum.”
Now: O’Callaghan said that the ‘majority’ of people who apply for asylum in Ireland are ‘economic migrants’.
Conclusion: Plus ca change, from the policy making elite of Ireland, a country with an historical record of economic migrancy second to none.
‘Back Where You Came From’:
Then: On 22 January 1999 in Laurentiu v. Minister for Justice the High Court ruled that Section 5(1)(e) of the Aliens Act 1935, from which the Minister’s powers to make deportation orders had derived, was unconstitutional. The deportation programme was immobilised for months.
Now: Recently a legal challenge succeeded for a man in his 30s who was among the thirty-nine Nigerians deported on the 4th June 2025 charter flight to Lagos for which Minister O’Callaghan gained much publicity. The man was forced to flee Nigeria after being seen engaged in same-sex activities. He has subsequently returned to Ireland to pursue his quest for refuge.
Then: Coming up to Christmas 1998 O’Donoghue ordered a slew of deportations. This move was countered by the Association of Nigerian Asylum Seekers in Ireland (ANASI) and the Anti-Racism Campaign (ARC). The Dublin offices of Aer Lingus were picketed. Protestors called on Aer Lingus workers not to co-operate with deportations. On 16th December Ekundayo Omoniyi resisted an attempted 7am deportation in Dublin Airport. Over one hundred people protested outside Mountjoy Prison where he and three others were held. On the night before Christmas Eve a protest was held outside the arrivals lounge at Dublin Airport. Soon all four walked free.
Now: Minister O’Callaghan pledges increased deportation flights and says the government is considering using ‘deportation hubs” outside the EU, the Dublin government again mirroring Westminster’s anti-immigration policies including grotesque televised deportations and its inhumane and illegal policy of deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda.
Conclusion: The government’s new policies present a challenge for anti-racist organisations in Ireland. Is more concerted action, perhaps direct action, required to block deportations? As the Anti Racism Campaign newsletter of February 1999 declared: “the twin tactics of public protests and court action can be successful.” Do Minister O’Callaghan’s plans need to be resisted as the deportation raids in December 1998 were resisted by those brave, principled people who united to protect those in their communities from expulsion? Or might this invite further repression against those in need of international protection and/or provide a rallying point for dangerous Far Right mobilisation?
It seems clear that the inhumane conditions long seen under Direct Provision have not been addressed, as the previous government promised, and indeed that we are have decisively entered a new and more dangerous phase of Ireland’s immigration system that doesn’t end but rather intensify the cruelty and depravations of DP. This takes place against the backdrop of, and indeed in response to, escalating levels of racist violence in Ireland accompanying the rise of the Far Right on the one hand, and the adoption of increasingly xenophobic immigration policies in Ireland’s closet international partners, the US, Britain, and the EU. These are challenging times that require new thinking, new practices, and growing capacities amongst anti-racist organisers.
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