Workers Solidarity Movement

MASI - the Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland - held its first ever conference Saturday to mark FIVE years of struggle to end Direct Provision.

Hundreds of people attended the conference in Liberty Hall whose theme was 'Towards a More Humane Asylum Process'. People in the asylum system travelled from across Ireland to discuss the past and present of the asylum and deportation machine and to point the way forward to the end of Direct Provision and a more humane asylum system.

The Direct Provision institutions were introduced as a supposedly temporary measure in 2000.  17 years later they are still with us and some have spent over a decade trapped in the institutional isolation and poverty they create.  Adult residents receive €21.60 a week and some like Mosney are in isolated locations with no transport connections.  Visitors are controlled and there are little or no cooking facilities which means the children who have grown up there have seldom tasted their parents cooking and have been unable to have friends sleep over.