The stories below were developed by research participants over a period of six months during which time they created the images, wrote the scripts, and co-edited the stories to completion within a community of practitioners. In this process, participants interrogated the “Direct Provision” system in Ireland.

In April 2000 the Irish government introduced what was termed an “emergency” or provisional system of “Direct Provision Accommodation and Dispersal.” Implementation of this direct provision system meant that adults could no longer work and study while awaiting a decision on their application for refugee status, rendering these individuals dependent on the State’s provision of food, accommodation and a weekly allowance of 19 euro and ten cents. Furthermore, individuals and families seeking protection were no longer entitled to live independently; instead, men, women and children who seek protection are placed in privately-run accommodation centers, often in isolated rural areas, serving to foster state-mediated exclusion from Irish society.

Since the beginning of the policy fifteen years ago, Irish scholars, legal advocacy organizations, and community-based groups have widely criticized the direct provision system and called for the development of a systemic and comprehensive immigration policy that upholds national and international laws and conventions. According to a 2003 report from the Free Legal Advice Centre (FLAC), the current direct provision system “is gravely detrimental to the human rights of a group of people lawfully present in the country, and to whom the government has moral and legal obligations under national and international law.”

These are our stories, written from the heart, with no guards on our emotions, our experiences, or our ideas as single women, fathers, mothers, Asian, African, non-English speaking, Christian and Muslim people living in Direct Provision Centres across this country. Our stories might be different, but the frustrations are the same. Dreams have been shattered, self-esteem destroyed, talents wasted, the steam and fire of our labour years put out, except for that familiar label: “A bunch of asylum seekers.” The nine storytellers did not participate in this project to evoke sympathy, but to remind this society that the mental health of every individual, even that of an asylum seeker, is an important decimal in the economic data of any society.

-Joyce, Premiere screening, 28 May 2009

For further information about refugee and asylum concerns in Ireland, see the Irish Refugee Council website.

Living in Direct Provision: 9 Stories Credits:
Director, Researcher and Workshop Facilitator – Darcy Alexandra
Executive Producers – Aine O’Brien, Alan Grossman
Post Production Supervisor – Aodán O’Coileáin
Workshop Contributors and Instructors – Darcy Alexandra, Aodán O’Coileáin, Keith Feighry, Veronica Vierin
Sound Technician – Spyros Kousidis
Collaborating Agency Coordinators: Monica Anne Brennan, Maeve Burke, Francesco De Salvia, Wale Mogaji
Funded by the Forum on Migration and Communication, in partnership with Refugee Information Service and Integrating Ireland