Over the course of this Government’s time in office, we have seen a disappointing pattern of irresponsible grandstanding by Ministers trying to play tough on immigration. This Bill is the latest example. It goes further than is required under the EU migration pact in restricting the rights of migrants and leaves gaping holes when it comes to protecting those rights. There were real issues with the pact, which were raised in debates at the time, but now the Government wants to go further still in constraining migrant rights. I want to speak to a couple of specific issues that show this Bill for what it is. First is the Bill’s use of the term "legal counselling". Rather than providing individuals with good old-fashioned, tried and tested legal advice from a solicitor during the first stage of an international protection process, the Government is saying it will provide something called "legal counselling". I have never heard this phrase, despite practising as a lawyer for many years. This is a term introduced by the EU pact but it remains undefined to date. We do not know what it will involve or who will provide it. It seems to be little more than a one-way information-giving process in which an applicant would have no ability to interrogate the information given to them against their own personal circumstances, or to ask questions and receive advice and guidance on it. As the Law Society has pointed out, in the absence of clarity as to what it is, we need to ask whether a "legal counselling" regime can be fully set up and resourced by June of this year. The EU pact does not require this. The Government could and should have used the term "legal advice" but has actively chosen not to. That creates real uncertainty as to the rights of migrants. It risks undermining access to effective legal assistance, as required under the pact. Solicitors cannot be expected to provide general legal counselling while the State withholds individualised, tailored legal advice from people who would otherwise be their clients. It is easy to imagine scenarios where the absence of proper legal advice leads to errors in applications and sees genuine asylum seekers, fleeing war or persecution, fail in their applications or be denied specialist care. That would be an abject failure of the Government to see through our obligations. Previously, asylum applicants were only entitled to be represented at the second stage of the asylum process, before the Refugee Appeals Tribunal. This resulted in 90% of asylum seekers being rejected at first instance. I was proud to be part of a programme providing early legal advice for asylum seekers, in conjunction with the Irish Refugee Council and my former law firm, A&L Goodbody, which resulted in far higher success rates for applicants. We know how important full legal advice is to ensuring individuals can vindicate their rights. The Minister knows this as well as anyone else. The dilution of this right to advice is a retrograde step and can only be seen as a further cynical attempt to limit the numbers of successful asylum applications. Another major issue with this Bill is the way in which it significantly increases the criminalisation of IP applicants. It creates a range of new offences for applicants who are lawfully resident in the State while exercising their right to seek asylum. That is the wrong direction of travel. The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, IHREC, has pointed, in particular, to the criminalisation of the use of false or even substitute documents. When we are talking about people fleeing war or persecution, we are talking about people who, by definition, will often not hold official documents from their country of origin. Members can see how easy it would be for documents to be seized by a trafficker or a rogue government, or just lost in the chaos of fleeing a war zone. If we criminalise this behaviour, as this Bill does, we effectively criminalise the very route to seeking asylum. The Bill will introduce a new chief inspector of asylum border procedures, as required by the pact. The Government claims this will be an independent role but what is set out here falls far short of that, as I am sure others will go into. A faster, more efficient asylum process is a worthy aim. A Bill that did just that would be welcome but this is a Bill that seems more interested in limiting the rights of vulnerable asylum seekers than anything else.

Sentiment score: 0.05