Theatre Director Oonagh Murphy: On Why It's Time To End Direct Provision

Direct provision is Ireland’s response to the large movement of displaced peoples across the globe over the past few decades. Our increased prosperity as one of the most developed nations in the world puts an onus on us, as per the United Nations’ 1951 Treaty and 1967 Protocol on the rights of the refugee, to offer safe asylum to those in need.

In the 1990s, direct provision was put in place as a temporary measure to house refugees as they awaited their asylum process results. The types of places that were turned into DP centres were old hotels, holiday camp style resorts and low-budget hostels. These were not places for individuals, often fleeing the trauma of war, famine, drought and terror, to be housed humanely for any significant period of time. Sadly, however, successive governments have failed to act on changing the system. Instead, the official policy appears to be to make the waiting period as long as possible.

Some people wait eight or nine years for their papers to come through, or to be deported if they are unsuccessful. This, coupled with decrepit conditions, means it is reasonable to perceive direct provision not as a human rights failure. Instead, it can be perceived as a conscious policy, an exercise in inhospitality, intended to lower numbers of those seeking asylum in Ireland.

The Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland are doing incredible work to highlight the abuse of those living in direct provision. The issues are manifold. There are privacy issues: individuals are forced to live in close quarters with strangers, unable to have visitors, have curfews and must sign in and out. There are seemingly petty restrictions which cause great hardship: the inability to cook one’s own food, to store food in private rooms, and the strict timetabling of meals, with poor dietary provision and cost-cutting at every turn.

There are hygiene and comfort oversights: grim rooms with mould and blood stains on the floor, refusal for new bed linen, cramped, and tenement-style bunk-beds, piled in with little regard for the effect on the mental health of the individual. There is a total lack of empathy for the lives these individuals have lived, lives that were so threatened by violence and danger, people risked everything to escape.

Irish people are a migrant people. We have benefitted from opportunities the world over. There is such bitter irony to our inability to offer compassion to those who suffer, same as and worse than our own people, upon their arrival on our shores. We are turning a blind eye to injustice in our own towns, where asylum seekers are osctracised by the very structures which should be there to support and care for them. Rather than settle into our reputation as one of the most socially-progressive countries in the world, I hope that we continue to evaluate the policies our government presides over, and to make the rights of asylum seekers in Ireland an electoral issue. Direct provision is not fit for purpose. And in line with our overall housing crisis in Ireland, it is almost at full capacity as it is now.

Let’s imagine a new system of refugee care that allows for the most sustainable, integrated and human-centred approach. Irish people, we’re told, became active members of the societies where they were given a fair start. Let’s create the opportunity for those coming to Ireland to flourish in the same way.

• Oonagh Murphy is directing a new version of The Playboy Of The Western World, which runs at the Gaiety Theatre from September 25 – October 5, as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival.