improving government service delivery to minority ethnic ... - NCCRI

e expected to pay the non-EU fee, which acts as a barrier and effectively excludes them in practice in the vast
majority of cases. There are also issues with non-recognition of qualifications, as Benedicta Attoh outlined at
the conference:
“ In the area of education, third level certificates from outside the EU are not recognised.
There are people you know among my community, who have masters degrees from
Africa but their certificates are not recognised.”
Asylum seekers face particular problems. They receive a payment from the HSE until they achieve refugee
status and are transferred onto a social welfare payment. In order to get funding to attend PLC courses a
prospective student needs to be on this social welfare payment for six months to be eligible. However, asylum
seekers’ prior HSE payments are not taken into account; so that students must wait a further six months on
social welfare before becoming eligible. Prospective students also say that the Immigration Office is very
difficult to deal with:
“ they won’t answer the phone… we get nowhere with them”.
The fact that people still in the asylum seeking process are not permitted to work or given access to tertiary
education, and that their overseas qualifications are frequently not recognised, will in all likelihood have
consequences, in the case of those who remain in Ireland, in de-motivating second generation migrants and
limiting their full inclusion in future Irish society.
Services
According to the Department of Education, the principal immediate difficulties for immigrants are (a) the
admission of pupils into overcrowded schools and (b) language support services. At national level the majority
of the Department’s publications are in Irish and English only. However, plans to translate a substantial number
of the Department’s main documents into languages such as Polish, Latvian, Russian and Lithuanian are
well advanced. These plans include the translation of documentation on appeals procedures, procedures on
bullying, publications for parents and information on schools and the Equal Status Act, 2000. The translations
will be made available on the Department’s website. The Department has considered the question of guidelines
for the provision of interpretation services in schools but this is still at a preliminary stage.
At the local school level, religious issues, as pointed out earlier, can sometimes be a problem for non-Catholic
children at some schools. A few people report being told, when applying for a place in school, that the Catholic
ethos of the school prevails and there would be no negotiation around alternatives. For practical and insurancerelated
reasons, many Catholic schools do not make provision for non-Catholic children to be removed from
the class during religion class although in practice non-Catholic children do not participate actively in the class.
While these questions affect Irish-born children as well as immigrants, they are likely to loom larger as Ireland’s
multi-ethnic and multi-religious population continues to evolve.
Training
Anti-racism training is not provided in all cases but cultural awareness training and equality issues training
are offered on an in-service basis to serving primary and second-level teachers. Courses of this kind are now
the norm in teacher training colleges and for Higher Diploma in Education (HDip) courses. In contrast, those
spoken to at post leaving-certificate level had not received any training in anti-racism, cultural awareness,
equality issues or the provision of services to immigrants and/or minority ethnic groups. The view was
expressed that such training was badly needed.