During the week we were warned that if immigration continued at its present rate, then we d run out of available housing by October of this year. My own first response is that you could build an awful lot of houses between now and October if you were of a mind to: there may even be a vacant site becoming available down at Spencer Dock shortly (he jested). But we ll let that pass it s just too obvious a thought.
The line about running out of available housing was being spun for a reason. It was to justify the Minister s latest wheeze for dealing with immigrants while they wait for their applications for refugee status to be processed. In fact there are two latest wheezes, both of which have a similar dehumanising, marginalising whiff about them.
The first suggestion was that we might accommodate asylum-seekers in boats or flotillas of some kind, which presumably would be parked somewhere between O Connell Bridge and The Point Theatre, in Dublin. Now this does indeed seem like a very clever plan. You can imagine some of our more hard-nosed immigration officers discussing the finer nuances of it over a cup of Bovril: If we don t drown a few of the bastards, we ll make them so seasick that they ll be out of here and on their way back to Borneo, or wherever they come from, before any of us has a chance to shout Heil Hitler .
The first reports indicated that these contraptions are currently in use in Holland. A delegation had gone to Amsterdam to take a peek (I know, the mind boggles). The delegation seemed to be satisfied with what it saw, but some salesman must have been on to someone subsequently, because it emerged a few days later that a different option was now also being considered.
This is possibly an even better wheeze. You know how all these black fellas are really nomads, like, one immigration official says to the other. Aye, sure they re only just down from the trees a few years ago, aren t they? his mate responds sympathetically. Well, that got me thinking, the first fella says, why don t we put them all in a great bloody big tent? They re used to that sort of thing. It d be like a home from home for them. Begob, that s a good idea. I think I ll suggest that one to the boss. We could even put one of those wooden things outside, like they have in westerns where they could tie up their camels or zebras or whatever it is they ride over there.
Now you have to admit it s a good one. Stick em all in a great big bloody tent. Why didn t I think of that? It s so imaginative.
The really sad thing is that we pay people to sit around all day dreaming execrable ideas like this up on our behalf. It s not the first proposal emanating from the Department of Justice that s made me wonder about the mindset of the people employed there. I know someone who was transferred to the Revenue Commissioners many years ago. He was considered a bright prospect and became a very high-ranking official in another department later, but on the day he started in the Rev. his boss took him aside. It s different here, he was told. We ll have to inculcate you into the Revenue mind . He couldn t wait he got the quickest possible transfer out of there.
That nonsense disappeared from the Revenue years ago. But you get the feeling that a similar kind of cult-ism, a sort of siege mentality, may persist in the Department of Justice. Imagine having to psyche yourself into a frame of mind in which you want more prisons; then you want to put people behind bars to justify the investment; you want a bigger budget for the Gardam; you want money so armed boats can travel the coast searching for drug dealers it must get to the stage where you clap every criminal abomination because it fuels your argument for a bigger slice of the national cake to be spent chasing people and locking them up.
I know I m exaggerating. But when you trace the actions of the Department of Justice and its officials on the issue of immigration, and the appalling treatment which has been meted out to people foolish enough to try their luck here, you wonder how much am I really exaggerating? And when you look at the archaic stance that we are continuing to adopt on the treatment of cannabis-related offences, you realise that these things are ideological. And when you further consider the grotesque waste of valuable resources involved in busting people for the possession of marijuana or cannabis, bringing them before the courts, jailing at least some of them, then the feeling hardens: any national analysis of this leads to the same, inevitable conclusion, that all of the time, effort, energy and money spent as a result of the criminalisation of cannabis use is wasted. How come this seems to escape our policy makers? How come this seems to escape our public servants?
The power of the Department of Justice, and the way it uses it, is something that does need to be examined. Indeed, the capacity which exists within certain departments of the public service to pursue their own agenda irrespective of the public good is a source of genuine concern. If we needed fresh evidence in this regard, it emerged this week in the case of Loretta Byrne, who worked in both the Department of Finance and the Department of Education. While she was with Education, according to a report in The Irish Times, Byrne came across allegations of child abuse, among other things, in the Finglas Children s Centre, run by the De La Salle Brothers. Despite the fact that she brought these to the attention of the authorities, nothing was done to investigate them. She continued to pursue the allegations to no avail, and eventually she retired in 1993 on health grounds. She believes that she was forced to.
Clearly the Brendan Smyth case in 1994 changed the climate in relation to reporting allegations of child abuse involving members of religious orders, and now seven years since Loretta Byrne retired, a file has been sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions regarding what happened in the mid- 80s in The Finglas Children s Centre.
Was it the Department of Education or the Department of Finance (to which Loretta Byrne returned in 1987) that had such a distaste at the time for the notion of pursuing this extremely serious matter? Or might it have been the Department of Justice, a logical first port of call for a Department of Education representative looking for guidance?
I don t know the answer. But I do have a strong feeling that the record of the Department of Justice, overall, is not something to be proud of. Is there anyone out there who can get beyond the veil?