An Emergency Fund?
During the coverage of the Roma families moving out of their homes near the Village, attention was focussed on the legal anomaly concerning migrants from the so called A2 states, Romania and Bulgaria. Since their home countries joined the European Union, people from the A2 states can travel and live here, but they are meant to register to work and cannot claim welfare benefits. That's why the Housing Executive didn't step in to provide accommodation for the families, beyond temporary emergency shelter.
Today the Human Rights Commission called on the government to revisit this policy in a report entitled The key conclusion of the Commission is that "the Government's approach in this area should mirror international human rights standards. Therefore, the Commission recommends
that, regardless of nationality or immigration status, everyone within the territory of the
UK should have access to an adequate standard of living sufficient for that person
and their dependents. It further recommends that public authorities should take all appropriate measures, including legislative measures, to the maximum of their available resources, with a view to achieving progressively the full realisation of this right. In particular, no one should be allowed to fall into destitution. For the purpose of ensuring these recommendations, the Government should ensure that everyone has access to
appropriate emergency accommodation."
Sinn Fein's Jennifer McCann has welcomed the report calling for the creation of an emergency fund to "help people who have come to live in Ireland and through a bad turn of circumstance face being homeless, take sick or are left vulnerable and who cannot access those services through normal channels due to their immigration status."
So far none of the other parties have dropped their thoughts into my in box, but perhaps, notwithstanding the arguments of an NIHRC spokeswoman on Good Morning Ulster this morning, they fear that the financial implications of opening the welfare system to people "regardless of nationality or immigration status" may be too onerous to contemplate.
I'm 
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