The White Paper on ending Direct Provision is great for the future but what about the present?

March 10, 2021

ActionAid Ireland strongly urges the government to adopt the recommendation from the Catherine Day Advisory Group on giving permission for the right to remain to people two or more years in the system.

It has been just under two weeks since the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth launched a White Paper on ending Direct Provision. After reviewing the document in detail, ActionAid Ireland broadly welcomes the publication and wants to commend the Irish Government on the ambitious roadmap it has developed to end this abhorrent system.

ActionAid wants to praise the leadership of the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth for ensuring the White Paper is grounded in a human rights approach. Creating a system that is person-centered is crucial for upholding the dignity, respect, and privacy of asylum applicants. We want to stress however, such a system can only be plausible and genuinely grounded in a human rights approach if applicants are aware, conscious of, and are given the ability to challenge power and hold the state and other duty bearers accountable.

What should be commended

The White Paper has many aspects of which it should be commended for. These include but are not limited to:

The focus the White Paper has on the rights of women is hugely welcomed by ActionAid. We are very happy to see clear commitments made to ensuring women have access to quality sexual and reproductive healthcare and free period products.

Ensuring that there is a specific focus on the needs of children, young people, families, and people with particular vulnerabilities is welcomed. Often international protection applicants can be considered to form one homogenous group. Therefore, ActionAid is glad to see the commitment to vulnerability assessments to determine the level of support each individual applicant needs. A move away from a paternalistic, one size fits all system is a move in the right direction.

The importance being placed from the outset on early integration for all applicants is a positive shift from the current system. And is clearly committed to by ensuring applicants will be limited to a maximum of four months in temporary reception accommodation.

What about the present for Direct Provision?

The White Paper however is not without its faults; ActionAid would raise particular concern that although the Paper has ambitious aspirations for those claiming protection in the next few years it does nothing to negate the hardship of those living in the system today. There are over 7,000 people currently living in Direct Provision. Many have been here for more than five years due to processing being hampered by extensive bureaucratic delays. When Direct Provision was first established the length of time an applicant was expected to be in the system was six months. We must do more for the people the state has failed.

Right to remain if here over two years

We would urge the Government to adopt the recommendation from the Catherine Day Advisory Group on giving permission for the right to remain to people two or more years in the system. The Government have formally recognised that the current system is not fit for purpose. But, has shown no commitment to those people who this week still face the challenges they did the week before the launch of the White Paper.

Amplify Our Voices

ActionAid Ireland, through the generous support of the St. Stephens Green Trust, are about to undertake a new project working with people currently living in Direct Provision, the Amplify Our Voices project. We aim/intend to support people who have experienced the system firsthand to lead some of the discussions around putting the White Paper into practice. And challenging some of its shortcomings. ActionAid believes that the ability of rights holders to advocate for their own inclusion in and creation of political and public alliances heightens their ability to participate in and influence policy dialogues and decisions. For this reason, ActionAid has developed the Amplify Our Voices project. It is a two-year programme that will work with women located within Direct Provision centers in the south of Ireland.

Finally, in the past two weeks we have heard the reaction to the White Paper that it heralds a ‘seismic shift’ in Ireland’s approach to the asylum system process. If this shift is to indeed become a reality, it needs to address the existing cracks in the system as opposed to painting over them. For that reason, we once again urge the Government to address the back log in the system and adopt the recommendation from the Catherine Day Advisory Group.

Protestors at COP 28 in Dubai. Photo: Konrad Skotnicki.

Belfast Climate Change March, 2019. Photo: Trócaire.

The Profit Driving the Crisis

Despite their overwhelming contribution to global emissions, fossil fuel companies continue to attract significant financial backing—driven by their enduring profitability. This is starkly illustrated by the case of ExxonMobil, the top fossil fuel investment held by asset managers based in Ireland. In 2023, ExxonMobil reported €33.63 billion ($36 billion) in profit. That is almost twice the GDP of Botswana (€18.1 billion) and nearly three times Namibia’s GDP (€11.5 billion).

Ireland plays a hugely disproportionate role in facilitating investments into fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil. In 2023, the investments made into fossil fuel companies by investment managers based in Ireland generated an estimated 72.5 million tons of CO2e. This is more than the CO2e emissions for the entire country of Ireland—and more than ten times that generated by Sierra Leone.

The Global Human Impact

The climate crisis is here, now, and it is causing disproportionate harm in the Global South. In Bangladesh, rising sea levels and increasingly severe cyclones are displacing coastal communities, with projections indicating that 17% of the entire country could be underwater by 2050. The legally binding Paris Agreement on climate change explicitly acknowledges the importance of tackling private finance. Its three overarching goals are: keeping below 1.5C of warming; increasing adaptation and making finance flows consistent with low emissions and resilience.

This gives a clear mandate for action: both tax reform and corporate regulation are needed to tackle financial flows, and both nationally in Ireland and at EU level, ‘polluter pays’ taxes are lacking and regulation of the financial sector remains weak and fragmented. While EU regulation exists, it is designed more to nudge investors toward more sustainable investment practices by increasing transparency and reporting levels than to enforce strict standards. And it is moving in the wrong direction: the recently passed EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive excluded investments; and now the EU Commission’s Omnibus legislative proposal threatens to undo the limited gains made on climate plans, as well as blocking future attempts for stronger action at national level.

The Risk of Inaction

Fossil fuel investment is too profitable to remain weakly regulated. If Ireland continues with its current strategy of encouraging FDI at all costs, and relying on weak EU regulation, we are headed for catastrophe. The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change has repeatedly warned that every fraction of a degree beyond 1.5°C brings irreversible consequences: collapsed ice sheets, vanishing coral reefs, and extreme weather events that will make vast regions of the planet uninhabitable. And yet, companies are developing oil and gas fields that could push global warming beyond 2°C.

Our research found that 91% of the investments made into fossil fuel companies by investment managers based in Ireland were to companies that have plans for fossil fuel expansion like these. Ireland cannot afford inaction on this issue.

About This Research

The figures in this report regarding investment from Ireland are based on new research commissioned by ActionAid Ireland and Trócaire. In the paper, we uncover the scale of fossil fuel investment through Ireland, who the investors are, and in which fossil fuel companies they are investing. We analyse the current regulatory framework and explain why it is inadequate—and moving in the wrong direction. And we make specific recommendations for change, which are summarised below.

Summary of Recommendations

Regulate the private financial sector
Ireland must end its outsized role as an enabler of destructive fossil fuel investment. Ireland should introduce a strong gender-responsive national human rights and environmental due diligence framework which includes the regulation of investors with respect to human rights and the environment and climate. The transposition of the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive could achieve this if downstream activities are included and the Omnibus proposal is rejected. Ireland should prohibit investments in fossil fuel expansion and require investors to implement climate transition plans consistent with a 1.5°C climate limit.

Endorse the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty
Ireland should endorse developing a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty to curb fossil fuel expansion and commit to a fair and funded phase out of fossil fuels.

Support tax justice
Ireland should support bold and fair new global tax rules through the UN Framework Convention on Tax, should adopt all OECD BEPS measures, and should conduct an updated and comprehensive spillover analysis of its tax policy. Ireland should take coordinated action globally, at the EU level and domestically to introduce a range of new taxes to mobilise finance needed for climate justice, based on ‘polluter pays’ and social equity principles such as wealth taxes for the highest earners, climate damages tax on investors, fossil fuel production taxes and levies on aviation and shipping.

Finance a just transition
Ireland must also meet its fair share climate finance obligations under Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement, and pay our ecological debt to the Global South. Ireland should support conditionality-free debt cancellation for countries on the front lines of the climate crisis, commit to a new UN Framework Convention on Sovereign Debt, moving debt negotiations from the IMF to the UN, and to a debt workout mechanism that is fully representative and fair.