The State’s approach to migrant integration is “outdated, unrealistic, unfair” and must be urgently revised by the incoming government, a community integration charity has said.
The Sanctuary Runners charity, which promotes integration between asylum seekers and Irish people through sport, has called on the leaders of all major political parties to take a new “two-way” approach to migrant integration.
In a briefing document submitted to Government officials on Wednesday, the charity called for a “community integration strategy” to replace the planned migrant integration strategy, which is scheduled to be published later this year.
It expressed frustration at the “common lack of understanding of the intrinsic importance of community integration” and accused the Government of placing too much focus on integration into the labour market rather than into society.
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The State should not simply fund projects but dedicate personnel and resources to improve integration, said the charity. It should learn from the successes of integration through sport and develop a programme for all Irish sporting bodies to connect in a “meaningful way” with minority ethnic groups, said the Sanctuary Runners briefing.
Government departments and public bodies, “which often consist almost exclusively of white Irish people”, must change how they consult and communicate with migrant communities, it added.
The State’s weak understanding of migrant communities resulted in poor vaccine and health messaging during the pandemic for the almost 100,000 people living in Ireland who speak English poorly or not at all, it said.
The 2020 programme for government committed to developing and implementing a new migrant integration strategy to replace the scheme introduced in 2017. This strategy expired in 2021.
In 2023, the government held a public consultation to help develop the new scheme, and last October, Minister for Integration Roderic O’Gorman said his department was concluding a second phase of consultation and that he intended to publish the new strategy by the second quarter of this year.
Mr O’Gorman was the only Green Party member to be elected in the November general election and is not expected to form part of the next government.
Asked for an update on the status of the new migrant integration strategy, a spokesman for the Department of Integration said the second phase of consultation was now completed and the successor to the migrant integration strategy was due to be published, following government approval, later this year.
Michael Darragh Macauley, chief executive of Sanctuary Runners, said the previous strategy “fell woefully short of delivery for migrants and Irish society overall” and “looked great on paper but in practice few of the objectives ever left the page”.
“A national strategy needs to have teeth – otherwise, without accountability, we allow a vacuum to develop in Irish society and divisive narratives to spawn. We need to find ways to bring people together in communities across Ireland,” said Mr Macauley.
Graham Clifford, founder of Sanctuary Runners, warned many immigrants continue to be “isolated, overlooked, not heard or included because of their nationality, legal status, ethnicity, religion or culture”.
“We still have a confused view, as a country, on what integration is,” said Mr Clifford. “Translating a few documents into other languages is not integration, holding an Africa day once a year is not integration, talking about ‘integration into the labour market’ is different from feeling part of a community.
“Integration needs be something championed and enabled in every community across the country on a daily basis and informed by best practice and the views of people who now live in Ireland but come from other countries originally. And crucially it needs to involve everyone – not just migrants.”
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