No. 241 NAI TSCH/3/S11007/B/2

Memorandum for Government by the Department of External Affairs
'Appeal of United Nations High Commissioner in respect of aged, disabled, etc., refugees'

Dublin, 14 January 1954

  1. The Minister for External Affairs has received from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees an appeal on behalf of ‘hard-core’ refugees at present in North China. The appeal was personally conveyed to the Minister by Monsieur Henry Trémaud, Deputy Director of the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, during a recent visit to Dublin.
  2. There are some 15,000 persons, White Russians, at present in North China whom the High Commissioner is endeavouring to settle in other countries. The able bodied are being transferred at the rate of about 350 a month to countries such as the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. There are, however, about 670 cases of persons chronically sick, aged, blind, tuberculous, mentally affected or otherwise physically incapacitated who present a special problem. The High Commissioner has given a special undertaking to assist these people to the General Assembly of the United Nations and, according to Mr. Trémaud, has been successful in obtaining undertakings to accept some of these people from the following countries: France 35, Belgium 30, Netherlands 30, Denmark 32 (including 12 mental cases), Sweden 34, Norway 25, Switzerland 40.
  3. Mr. Trémaud expressed the earnest hope that Ireland might be willing to take about 20 of these cases, and stated that should the Irish Government agree to admit 20 refugees, the High Commissioner would for his part be prepared to make available the necessary funds for the purchase and equipment of a property near Dublin, to house them, provided the cost does not exceed 20,000 dollars. In the event of vacancies arising in the home through death or otherwise such vacancies would be filled by other refugees of the same category within the mandate of the High Commissioner and would continue to be filled until such time as the total number of persons admitted under the scheme mounted to 40. The number of refugees accommodated in the home, however, would not at any time exceed 20.
  4. The purchase of a property to house these refugees has been proposed by the High Commissioner as his experience suggests the desirability of maintaining refugees of this class in a single group so as to palliate the effects of such a great change on people who, because of age or incapacity, are not readily adaptable to a new environment. The High Commissioner would, however, be prepared to consider any alternative arrangements for their reception and care which the Irish authorities might propose.
  5. The High Commissioner would not be in a position to grant any contribution towards the maintenance of the persons admitted. The sum of 20,000 dollars mentioned above would be the only contribution which he could provide but, in the event of the upkeep and maintenance of the proposed home and its inmates being undertaken by an Irish voluntary body such for example as the Irish Red Cross Society, the High Commissioner would agree that such body should be the owner of the home from the beginning of the operation of the scheme.
  6. The Irish Red Cross would not be in a position to maintain, out of its own resources, a home of the kind suggested and its occupants. From informal enquiries it would appear that on the basis of an intake of twenty persons with a grant of $20,000, an additional amount, which might be in the region of £5,000 per annum, would be required for upkeep and maintenance.
  7. The Minister for External Affairs is strongly of the opinion that Ireland should participate in this international relief action, by agreeing to the admission of a number of persons not exceeding twenty at any one time, and forty in all. He therefore proposes that the Irish Red Cross Society be formally requested to enter into negotiations with the High Commissioner for Refugees with a view to working out arrangements for the selection, reception, and subsequent care and maintenance of such a group. The Minister considers that from the point of view of our external relations it is most important that this country should not lag behind others in relief action of this kind and he would urge that the Irish Red Cross Society should if necessary be indemnified, to the extent of, say, £5,000, per annum in respect of the cost of maintaining these refugees here.
  8. The Minister for Justice1 has no objection to the admission of ‘hard-core’ refugees to the extent indicated in this memorandum. He is of the opinion, however, that the right approach to the problem is that which was approved by the Government on the 26th September, 1950, viz:-

    that the Irish Red Cross Society be asked to approach voluntary institutions providing for such classes as the blind, the senile, the chronically ill, the disabled and mentally defective (but not tuberculosis cases or other classes of cases the available accommodation for which is taxed to the full) with a view to ascertaining whether they would be willing to receive refugees.

    The Minister for Justice has learned, informally, that the Chief Executive Officer and members of the Executive Committee of the Irish Red Cross Society are of the opinion that the Society would not of itself be in a position to supervise the daily care of aged and infirm people of the refugee class and that, while it would be prepared to approach voluntary institutions, if asked to do so by the Government, it can hold out no hope, on the basis of its general experience, of placing more than four or five incapacitated persons in voluntary institutions.

  9. The Minister for Health2 has no objection to the submission to the Government of the present memorandum. He is nevertheless of the opinion that there may be objections from the local authority in whose functional area the proposed home is established, by reason of the fact that the presence in the area of so large a number of infirm persons could, at times, tax the resources, in hospital beds, of that authority and that the cost of hospitalisation would fall on the funds of that authority.
  10. The Minister for Defence3 also agrees that Ireland should participate in the international relief action in question and is confident that the Irish Red Cross Society would, if requested, undertake to administer an institution of the type visualised. He has the following observations to make on the proposal:-
    1. Any reimbursement made to the Irish Red Cross Society should form part of the annual subvention to the Society and should not be specifically allocated;
    2. Persons housed in the institution to be established should be all of the same category, e.g., aged, blind, or mentally afflicted and should not include any class, e.g., tuberculous persons, for which the institutional treatment available in the country is already taxed to capacity;
    3. he sees advantages in endeavouring to adopt an alternative scheme whereby these refugees might be housed in one or more existing institutions among which the sum of $20,000 which the High Commissioner for Refugees is prepared to provide, might be allocated after an appropriate sum had been given to the Irish Red Cross Society to enable it to supervise the entry of the persons concerned into these institutions.

    The Minister for Defence suggests therefore that the Government should, at the present stage, only approve in principle of the country’s participation in this international relief action and that, further, an Inter-Departmental Committee should be established to go into the matter with the Irish Red Cross Society with a view to making recommendations as to the best manner of dealing with the question.

  1. The Minister for Finance4 agrees that Ireland should participate by agreeing to the admission of a number of persons not exceeding twenty at any one time, subject to a maximum of forty in all, involving if required a suitable Exchequer contribution not exceeding £5,000 a year towards the maintenance of not more than twenty refugees in any one year. As regards procedure, however, he would prefer an arrangement on the lines proposed by the Minister for Defence as outlined in the preceding paragraph. He feels also that attention should be drawn to the possibility that the action proposed in the present case may provide a precedent which might entail expensive measures in the case of other classes of refugees, e.g., Arab refugees in the Near East, Jewish and other refugees of East German origin and Korean refugees, requests for assistance to whom are received from time to time.
  2. Notwithstanding the observations of the other Departments concerned as set out in paragraphs 8 – 11 above, the Minister for External Affairs remains of the opinion that the most satisfactory method of dealing with this request would be that set out in paragraph 7 above, namely that the Irish Red Cross Society be formally requested to enter into negotiation with the High Commissioner for Refugees with a view to working out arrangements for the reception and subsequent care and maintenance of such a group. As regards the suggestion that the group of twenty refugees be placed in a number of voluntary institutions, the Minister wishes to emphasise that the representative of the High Commissioner for Refugees has been most insistent on the desirability of an arrangement which would permit the entire group to be housed together. As mentioned in paragraph 4 the High Commissioner is anxious to avoid the ill effects which segregation from their fellows would have on aged and physically incapacitated persons transferred from a distant country.
  3. The Minister for External Affairs accordingly recommends

    1. that the Irish Red Cross Society be requested to enter into negotiations with the High Commissioner for Refugees with a view to making arrangements for the selection, reception and subsequent care and maintenance of a group of twenty of the refugees and for their replacement, as vacancies arise, until the total number admitted amounts to forty persons; and
    2. that the Society should, if necessary, be indemnified to the extent of not more than £5,000 a year in respect of the cost of maintaining the group in this country, and that any payments necessary in this connexion be made through the medium of the annual Grant-in-aid to the Society from the vote for Defence.5

1 Gerald Boland.

2 Dr. James Ryan.

3 Oscar Traynor.

4 Seán MacEntee.

5 See No. 252, for the minutes of the Cabinet's conclusions on this memorandum.



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