Fair Ireland Forum Dialogue Series at NUI Galway

Asylum seekers experiences' of Ireland's Direct Provision System NUI Galway will host the second event in the Fair Ireland Forum dialogue series on Thursday, 27 January at 7pm. The dialogue will explore asylum seekers' experiences of Ireland's direct provision system. The perception of asylum seekers themselves will form the central focus of the dialogue with additional contributions from a legal and NGO perspective. The event will be held in the Siobhan McKenna Theatre in the Arts Millennium Building at NUI Galway. The Fair Ireland Forum is an initiative of members of NUI Galway staff that aims to create space for the NUI Galway community to make concrete contributions to public debates on the current challenges facing Ireland – grounded in principles of fairness, social inclusion, democratic governance, accountability and respect for human rights. Fergal Landy, a member of the Fair Ireland Forum steering group at NUI Galway says: "The inaugural Fair Ireland Forum event in May 2010 was a great success and explored the human rights of children and families in Ireland, a dialogue that broadly took place in the aftermath of the Ryan Report on institutional abuse. The upcoming event is crucial to encourage this generation to show leadership in scrutinising the direct provision system now, rather than leaving it to subsequent generations saying we never knew what was going on." Participating in the dialogue will be Director of Galway Refugee Support Group, Triona Nic Giolla Choille, Albert Llussà i Torra, Solicitor with Daly Lynch Crowe and Morris and Vice-Chair of the Irish Refugee Council, and representatives of the asylum seeking community in Galway. Dr Vinodh Jaichand, the Deputy Director of the Irish Centre for Human Rights, will facilitate the dialogue on the evening. There will be an opportunity for a public discussion/question and answer period. As part of this event there will also be a slide-show photography exhibition entitled New Bridges: a collection of photographs and stories by people living in direct provision. This exhibition is the result of a four-month collaboration in 2010 between visual ethnographer Zoë O'Reilly (NUI Maynooth) and eight individuals seeking asylum in Ireland and living in the direct provision system. The work is part of a doctoral research project, aiming to explore and to create better understandings of asylum and direct provision in Ireland, from the experiences of those living within this system. All photographs and texts were created by the participants of the project. The event is free and open to the public. This dialogue series is supported by the Social Sciences Research Centre (SSRC). ENDS