The big news this week from the government’s new tough-talking spin on immigration is that means testing will now be carried out on asylum seekers who are working, to ascertain if they are, in fact, eligible for the daily expenses allowances paid to those living in direct provision and international protection settings.
This latest positioning is a fairly cynical bid for votes from Fine Gael, in particular, after it became obvious to all that immigration had been catapulted into the top rankings for issues most of concern to voters.
The headlines around the means testing announcement quoted Minister Helen McEntee describing the move as necessary to ensure the system was “fair” – and yes, that sounds conveniently close to the new Fine Gael mantra of “fair but firm” in regard to immigration.
But most of the media didn’t ask the Minister why, if fairness was so important, the government sat so long on the recommendation from its auditors 2022 report that means testing be introduced, and why it took the auditors to point out that means testing is a requirement for any claimant that has been in receipt of income for at least 12 weeks.
The splashy means testing announcement feels designed to grab the attention of voters, in the same way that Simon Harris’s frowny statements – delivered at the speed of a particular sort of salesman for extra emphasis – promises the electorate that the system is ‘firm but fair’.
If asylum applicants are, in fact, employed and earning more than €125 a week, then the daily expenses allowance may be cut, the government said. It was reported that a third of those claiming the allowance are, in fact, working – and that savings of €10 million in taxpayers funds might be expected from means testing.
In view of the billions of euro being lavished on asylum accommodation, that may seem like spare change – but, right now, there are children without badly-needed mental health services in Donegal because a centre had to close after HSE and Tusla said it would not give the paltry amount of funding needed for a full-time director of counselling – and for the want of €60,000, a vital service bringing isolated older people to medical appointments was forced to close.
The means testing announcement was met with protestations from the NGO sector: with taxpayer-funded groups like the Irish Refugee Council and NASC bemoaning the lack of consultation with, ahem, them before this decision was made, and demanding that the planned assessments be stalled.
(As an aside, why are there so many migrancy NGOs, all with their own CEOs and staff and websites and branding etc etc, given that these are taxpayer-funded entities who are singing from the same hymnsheet on pretty much everything? Maybe its a diversity target? And how tone deaf is an organisation which bewails lack of consultation from the government in relation to means testing but doesn’t seem to think that local people should have the right to decide on migrant centres being forced into an area?)
Minister Heather Humphreys said that the means testing would begin taking place next month, which, as a matter of massive and almost startling coincidence, is also when an election will take place against a background of growing public anger on the issue of immigration.
Repeated polls have now shown that immigration – and the government’s disastrous handling of same – is a priority issue for huge numbers of voters. Most of the hurried and loudly announced actions now being flagged by the Cabinet seem very obviously a panicked reaction to this growing public upset.
So if its all feels a bit choreographed, that’s likely because it is. For example, the timing of the new measures should be understood in light of the fact that the government has been sitting on the supposedly all-important advice that spurred them to action now for at least 8 months, perhaps more.
The daily expenses allowance is a means-tested entitlement for claimants in a designated accommodation centre. Legislation requires the Department to conduct a means assessment after the claimant has been in receipt of income for at least 12 weeks, and to reduce or terminate the allowance to reflect any increase in means.
However, the audit found that the Department has not conducted any means assessments of claimants — the value of irregular payments cannot therefore be established and the Department is not in compliance with its statutory responsibilities in operating the scheme.
The Department has noted this finding and stated that it will consider implementing means-testing for international applicants in employment. Scheme expenditure in 2022 was €19.3 million.
So the auditors raised this issue with the Department sometime in 2023, but the government sat on its hands for all this time, most likely because it was still cultivating its image as the “most welcoming country in the world” to win favour with the people they think matter, such as the EU or the UN or pretty much anyone but the Irish people whom they were elected to represent.
In fact, Fine Gael and the rest of the Cabinet will have known that legislation dictates that the means test should have been applied from the beginning of the system, so this new decision is just the latest piece of evidence which shows that the government has, in fact, failed the fairness test and applied different rules to asylum seekers than to Irish people.
It’s only now, when under pressure ahead of an election – and likely observing the brazen attempted flip flop by Sinn Féin into a party supposedly opposed to open borders – that Ministers are talking tough on the issue.
Independent TDs have long pointed to the manifest unfairness of a system where new arrivals, for example, are automatically entitled to medical cards (something that many Irish families are denied, and that even patients battling terminal illnesses often don’t receive), as well as significantly padded support packages for third level courses.
This new offering of means testing – because that’s what it is, a message to voters – is being made in the context of a real crisis: a situation that has predictably spiraled out of control with massively detrimental effects on housing, healthcare and social cohesion.
In fact, the means testing doesn’t even make that much sense, given that the allowance paid to those in asylum accommodation is €38.80 per week for an adult and €29.80 for a child, and that there is a cost to means testing. (Those without accommodation and on a waiting list for a place to stay receive an increased adult rate of €113.80 per week.)
But that’s the whole point really: it allows the government to talk up its game, possibly without achieving very much at all in the long term.
The numbers will still continue to climb, not just because of the pull factors, but because we are also seen as a soft touch in terms of being able to enter the country.
So it was announced to fanfare today that 100 people have been prosecuted this year for arriving into Ireland without a passport – but what wasn’t reported in the same piece was that those prosecutions are a drop in the ocean given that we have allowed at least 13,500 people into the country without identifying documents in recent years.
Similarly, my colleague Matt Treacy has pointed out that deportation numbers are abysmally low, and that most orders are never enforced and huge numbers are cancelled. Yet, we’ll be told that deportations are up a percentage which that means very little when they were at rock bottom to begin with.
Truth is, the government is increasingly speaking out of both sides of its mouth: with Minster Roderic O’Gorman saying an additional 15,000 asylum seekers each year would be the “new normal”, while other Cabinet members then announcing measures which can be spun to make it look as if the government is cracking down on illegal immigration.
The numbers of supposed asylum applicants, who in reality are mostly economic migrants, being accommodated by the State remain at an all time high, with former nursing homes and recycling centres being commandeered by a government which lacks the desire to actually tackle the crisis in a meaningful way.
Meanwhile, Fine Gael ministers also changed the law last week to allow partners and spouses of certain employment permit holders already in Ireland to work here. As ever, there was no debate about the possible consequences in terms of housing and other services, and no acknowledgment that our own young people are being driven out of the country because they feel they have no future here.
The rest of Europe is moving on with finding real solutions, such as looking at Rwanda-law-style processing abroad, while the Irish government is taking an absurdly long time to act on simple recommendations from its own auditors and failing to actually deal with the crisis in a meaningful way.
Will the promises to be ‘firm but fair’ last beyond the election? That’s something for voters to consider.