Identifying asylum seekers is a very tricky issue

I have to admit to being surprised when our chief reporter Aidan O’Connor told me about the legal ban on identifying asylum seekers in this country. The only exception appears to be if the applicant consents to such identification.

The surprise deepened when it became clear that the prohibition even extended to circumstances where the asylum seeker is convicted of the most serious crime, up to and including murder.

So, for example, an editor who identifies a murderer as an asylum seeker can, under the law as it currently stands, be jailed for up to 12 months and/or fined up to €5,000. That’s all down there in black and white at Section 26 of the International Protection Act 2015.

An understandable first reaction might be: that’s mad Ted.

But, there’s always another side (at least) to every story.

The prohibition on identifying asylum seekers is there for very good and proper reasons which relate to the application for asylum in the first place.

Seeking asylum implies that the applicant is fleeing their own country out of concerns about physical welfare. In plain language, their lives could be at risk.

Surely it would be entirely wrong – and self-defeating to the whole asylum process – to name an applicant in such circumstances, thereby informing the very people who would wish to do harm of his whereabouts and as a consequence putting his personal security at risk and also endangering the lives of family and friends in the home country.

The problem, however, is that the law provides no wriggle room. The asylum seeker cannot be identified as an asylum seeker even where he is sought by gardaí as a suspect in a crime, no matter how serious.

This is a tricky issue, which is why Killarney County Councillor Martin Grady’s call for a change in the law that would allow the identification of an asylum seeker who is sought by gardaí, deserves serious and detailed consideration.

Councillor Grady’s suggestion appears pretty straight-forward on the face of it. But what happens if the asylum seeker is named and is later found to be innocent of any crime?

In the meantime, his ‘home’ authorities have been informed of his whereabouts, which in turn puts his family at risk of any and all kinds of threat.

So, any change in the law must be considered with great care because of the many unintended consequences that may occur.

However, there is one other issue that crops up. The ban on identifying asylum seekers means there is less likelihood that our national crime statistics include the numbers of asylum seekers convicted of crimes.

That is, emphatically, not good as it excludes from our statistics valuable information that should inform public policy in respect of criminal justice.

Also, the absence of such data is a free gift to far-right nut-jobs and Trump-style big mouths to exaggerate the threat to society from asylum seekers.

Such exaggerations, without evidence, is seriously damaging and has to be weighed against the rationale for the identification ban in the first place.