Short drama-documentary in the IFI

Sanctuary is a series of 26 ultra-short stories of asylum and refuge in Ireland, being shown in rotation before features in the IFI this month. The stories are all based on interviews I’ve done with people seeking asylum, and were performed by a collection of well known and emerging actors and writers.

Reporting on refugee issues

Speech given at the launch of a new guide for journalists on reporting on refugee issues.

I came into journalism relatively late. In early 2000, I found myself in Angola in Southern Africa, as an aid worker with an Irish NGO, where the main focus of our work was the people displaced by the Angolan civil conflict. When I came home, in 2002, and started writing, one of the aspects of Irish life that had changed most notably while I was away, and which I found most interesting, was demographics, and I gradually started to cover this as a journalist, initially with Village Magazine and, more recently, freelance.

I’ve covered various insidious aspects of the asylum system

From Morocco: Thanks to Smile

A shorter version of this was broadcast on RTE Radio One’s World Report on July 26

The charity’s office was clean and bare, with two pcs humming on office desks, and some generic charts on the wall. The administrator was apologetic. The director had had to leave for an urgent meeting in the capital, and wasn’t there to meet me. He didn’t know when he’d be back.

I’ve travelled 12 hours across Morocco to meet him, I said. He was sorry, the administrator said. But there was nothing he could do.