Access Ireland has been in existence since early 1998, when the Irish Refugee Council received funding under a special EU budget line set up in that year to tackle the question of refugee integration throughout the EU member states.
The objectives the project set itself were: ·
*To highlight the positive contributions of refugees and the values of multi-culturalism in Irish society
*To improve refugees access to health and welfare services ·
*To promote greater understanding of refugee needs and intercultural awareness amongst social and health care providers ·
*To develop training materials to promote intercultural awareness and good anti-discriminatory practice amongst service providers ·
*To promote the development of refugee community initiatives.
A core value of the project was and is to include refugees at a very central level in the actions of the project, for example on the management committee, as staff members and in the training itself and also by facilitating ongoing and regular consultation with members of the refugee community. In this way it was hoped to conflate the first objective, the promotion of the idea of the positive contribution of refugees to the host society, with the other four objectives.