Dublin InQuirer •

Chatbots considered for providing legal counselling to people seeking asylum, documents suggest

The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission doesn’t believe chatbots are suitable “in provision of legal counselling”, a spokesperson said. Last autumn, officials at the Legal Aid Board (LAB) toiled to knit together a plan to offer “legal counselling” to people seeking asylum under a new law, show documents released under the Freedom of Information Act. They went back and forth with civil servants at the Department of Justice about how to fund the service, trying to work out the logistics o...
Dublin InQuirer •

Amid attacks from the right on “NGOs”, trust in Ireland’s charities has been declining

Scandals in some charities have also harmed the reputation of the sector as a whole, which is unfair, people working for other nonprofits say. Last summer, the political leaders of the European Parliament voted to embed a “scrutiny working group” in the EU Commission’s budgetary control committee to audit funding for non-governmental organisations (NGOs). The European People’s Party (EPP), which Fine Gael is a member of, floated the idea. The European Conservatives and Reformists supported it...
Dublin InQuirer •

Minister plans to make it much tougher for Ukrainian refugees to become Irish citizens

Andrii Stepanov says some people don’t want to return to what was once their home, and is now Russian territory. “Why are they pushing us to Russia?” In the nearly four years that he’s lived in Ireland, Denis Henesky has taught himself its laws and politics, weathered an eviction, made new connections and found a path to education, he says. “Everyone said, ‘integrate, integrate, integrate,’” said Henesky, resting his hands on a cane. Gradually, he’s come to realise that tallying his experienc...
Dublin InQuirer •

There’s been a surge in ethics complaints about Dublin city councillors

The numbers spiked after a new cohort of councillors was elected in June 2024, and have eased somewhat since then – while remaining higher than before. In just three months in 2024, while the current cohort of councillors was still new, nearly 100 complaints about councillors’ conduct were sent to Dublin City Council, show council figures. That’s almost 24 times as many grievances as all of 2o23, when only four were lodged. Generally, reports of councillors' alleged unethical conduct have sig...
Dublin InQuirer •

DFA argued that releasing feedback on decision to label Algeria as “safe” would hurt diplomatic relations

“It’s probably fair to assume that if the DFA said anything positive about Algeria’s human rights record, they wouldn’t be so determined to withhold it.” In late 2023, when officials in the Department of Justice were chewing over plans to earmark Algeria as a “safe” country, they sought the opinion of counterparts in the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA). When a country is designated as safe, asylum officers assume cases filed by its citizens aren't genuine. People seeking asylum from that...
Dublin InQuirer •

Mourning the loss of Bill Abom, lifelong champion of justice for overlooked immigrant workers

“We remember the work which you believed deeply in, and all of the people who were recipients of your efforts for change, one case at a time.” A trade union flag bobbed in the air as people clustered around a wooden coffin outside the Church of the Good Shepherd on Nutgrove Avenue, last week. The crowd was letting go of Bill Abom, union man and a social justice campaigner who devoted his life to making immigrant workers feel seen by mobilising them to speak up and unshoulder their pain. At th...
Dublin InQuirer •

Parking problems outside the masjid on South Circular Road are used to talk trash about Muslims, councillor says

But there’s only so much the masjid can do to police people’s bad parking – and it’s not just masjid-goers, it’s everybody, says Fazel Ryklief. On Friday at noon, strings of cars lined a stretch of South Circular Road in Dublin 8. Outside the street’s Dublin Mosque, and on the nearby avenues, there are more tight huddles of automobiles. A few traffic cones stood on the pavement outside the masjid, seemingly to combat footpath parking. Before Jumma prayers started that day, the imam brought u...
Dublin InQuirer •

Who will offer early-stage legal help to people seeking asylum in future, speedier process? It might not be lawyers

The new EU Migration and Asylum Pact allows for “legal counselling”. Those who give it won’t have to be “qualified lawyers”, says the Department of Justice. What’s the “extent of individual legal advice” offered to people seeking asylum right now? And what about next year, under the new EU Migration and Asylum Pact? Those were among the questions Luxembourgish officials asked other European Union member states in July, via the European Migration Network. By October, 26 countries had responded...
Dublin InQuirer •

Was the Department of Justice using experimental chatbots to give immigration advice?

“The public should not be used as guinea pigs, particularly vulnerable groups in a legal process which could be impacted by a chatbot giving an incorrect answer.” Department of Justice chatbots to answer questions about asylum and citizenship were developed via a “pre-commercial initiative” that was “aimed at supporting the early stages of developing new technologies and products”. That’s according to Enterprise Ireland, in response to a request under the Freedom of Information Act by Kris Shr...
Dublin InQuirer •

As government support for sheltering Ukrainian refugees dwindles, finding somewhere to live means taking more risks

“I understand now how valuable it is to help each other. How important it is to have a roof over your head, to have community.” Oleksandr Kisil pulls up a WhatsApp conversation with a recent ex-landlord on his phone. He’s a refugee from Ukraine, 21, and studies film in Ballyfermot College. He has a moustache and a mushroom haircut, like Jack in Titanic. And he’s warm, chatty and bubbly, small-talks with strangers. His favourite drink at Café Nero on O’Connell Street is strawberry matcha with...
Dublin InQuirer •

People with darker skin over-represented among crime victims, new survey suggests

The City Centre Crime Victim Survey was commissioned by Dublin Inquirer and carried out by Amarách Research. People of colour were over-represented among people who reported having been victims of insults, abuse, and crime in Dublin city centre in the previous 12 months, in a new survey. In a sample of 600 people who responded to our City Centre Crime Victim Survey, only 80 respondents said they have darker skin tones. That’s 13 percent. But this group, who said they had skin tones ranging fr...
Dublin InQuirer •

On Hardwicke Lane, a tiny masjid faces hostility and xenophobia, but it can’t afford to move

A new report says there’s a lack of spaces for faith-based communities in the north-east inner-city, and urges the council to help. In the north inner-city, wedged between Dorset Street and Hardwicke Street, is Hardwicke Lane. Down this laneway, there’s an Islamic community centre that doubles as a small masjid, which is Arabic for mosque. There’s no sign on the building’s heavy green door. But a small plaque that reads, “Sultan Mecid Education Centre” is affixed to the wall above it. Tunaha...
Dublin InQuirer •

Years after promise of a new integration strategy, Dublin City Council still doesn’t have one

There’s a desperate need for a roadmap to improve efforts to help people navigate immigrant life, and connect, say councillors and community workers. For months in 2021, it looked like Dublin City Council (DCC) was busy chewing over plans for a new integration strategy covering the years 2021 to 2025. Then the momentum died. All those years that the council was meant to lead integration efforts with a concrete roadmap have slipped by without one. Meanwhile, almost one in five people living in...
Dublin InQuirer •

“Voluntary” return schemes might be good for state – but not for asylum seekers, activists and academics say

They’re pressure campaigns and can lead people to make bad decisions, they say. But a Department of Justice spokesperson says they’re purely voluntary. On 30 September, Leanke Nikles’s phone lit up with a text on her asylum centre’s WhatsApp group. It was a “voluntary return leaflet” with the message asking people in the group to read it. Two people reacted with a thumbs-down emoji. These leaflets are also sometimes slipped under bedroom doors or handed to them as they go about their day at t...
Dublin InQuirer •

At council meeting, amendment highlights messy politics around planning exemptions for asylum shelters

“It was a little bit ill-informed, but they were in a rush to, you know, counterbalance Mr Pepper,” says independent Councillor Mannix Flynn. At a special council meeting, on the evening of 23 September, independent Councillor Gavin Pepper pitched a motion. His proposal called on the government to “withdraw all planning exemptions” for asylum shelters. Pepper said this wasn’t just an objection to the flaws of the planning exemption scheme, but to immigration in general. “Contracts are signed...
Dublin InQuirer •

A Desi group asked BuyMeACoffee not to let influencers make money from anti-Indian hate – and got ignored

Researchers say the role of crowdfunding platforms in the spread of harmful ideologies is largely overlooked. When members of Desi Community Against Racism noticed that some Irish influencers who post anti-Indian hate use BuyMeACoffee to raise funds, they decided to report it together, says Shashank Chakerwarti. They were shaken and angry because of real-life violence against Indian immigrants in Dublin, and worried inflammatory online posts make things worse, says Chakerwarti, a member of the...
Dublin InQuirer •

Smears and threats against lawyers representing people seeking asylum ramp up

“Solicitors play a vital role in the administration of justice and any threat to them is an attack on the legal rights of every person,” said a Law Society spokesperson. Over the weekend, an anonymous X account, which has repeatedly posted about lawyers representing those seeking asylum, shared a spreadsheet of firms involved in asylum cases. It would review them more deeply in the coming weeks, one post said. What exactly that means is unclear. But negative posts targeting those who represen...
Dublin InQuirer •

Against law, the Courts Service website published names of some people seeking asylum by “error”

A spokesperson says it has revised its processes to make sure it won’t happen again. But on Tuesday, some applicants’ names remained on its website. On 5 September, searching “International Protection Appeals Tribunal” (IPAT) on the Courts Service website’s High Court search engine threw up 76 filing notices. They included full names of people who’d brought cases against IPAT as recently as this month and as far back as 2017. Most of these cases were docketed on the court’s “asylum list”, the...
Dublin InQuirer •

When people die waiting in Ireland’s asylum system, their bodies may lie in limbo

When people seeking asylum in Ireland die, their bodies can lie in limbo as officials search for their next of kin, documents released under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act suggest. An internal message dated 14 January, from an International Protection Accommodation Services (IPAS) official, says that it doesn’t have any information on the identity of a “next of kin” for a deceased person who lived in an asylum centre on file. “I have been informed that no burial can take place until the...
Dublin InQuirer •

As anti-immigrant Dubliners hang more and more Irish flags, immigrant Dubliners exhibit objects that embody their Irishness

Harikrishnan Sasikumar’s exhibition of photos of these objects, At Home in Ireland, is on display now at The Hive at DCU’s U building. On Saturday afternoon, a sticker on a traffic sign at the entrance of Hazelcroft Road in Finglas said “BEWARE OF THE IRISH” over a line in the shades of the Irish tricolour. A flag rolled and danced on almost every lamppost on the road. They sprouted from the houses, too. Dublin City Council is considering what to do about these flags, its chief executive has...
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