World of Politics with Harry McGee

On Hallowe’en night, fire services around the country were fully stretched dealing with bonfires and with fireworks – but then an emergency call came in to Drogheda fire station about a fire in a building in the Louth town.

Twenty-five people were living there and were quickly evacuated. Despite the huge pressures of the busiest night of the year, the local fire services managed to contain the fire before it caused significant damage to the building.

Initially it was thought that the fire had been sparked by a stray firework, but it quickly emerged that this was no accident. CCTV footage showed a hooded man enter the building by a rear entrance, douse the back stairs with inflammatory liquid and then set it alight.

And who were the residents? Families seeking international protection; asylum seekers in other words, some with young children.

It was an IPAS centre.

Unfortunately, it was not an isolated incident. In that year, 16 properties were targeted including a number of those that were set fire to because there were rumours they would be used as IPAS centres. It has continued since sporadically – most recently with the violent clashes outside the City West facility in Dublin.

Immigration policy in Ireland has been a mess for the past 20 years. The services were under-staffed and under-resourced. The process itself has been complicated, messy and expensive. It took years for the authorities to arrive at a decision.

And then there were so many avenues of appeal including recourse the High Courts – and each of them took a purgatorial long time – that by the time the process finished and a final decision was made, it might have been a decade, or even a decade and a half, since the person first arrived into Ireland.

The only reason that was tolerable was that the numbers of people arriving to seek international protection was low, hardly more than 3,000 a year.

The low numbers were attributed to the establishment of direct provision centres, which were places where people stayed while awaiting a final decision. They were entitled to room and board, and very small living allowances. In other words, a disincentive to stay over the long term.

Pictured: Getting tough…Minister Jim O’Callaghan.