Residents of Tramore, Co Waterford, say the town would welcome asylum-seekers, but the figure of 90 planned by the Department of Justice is too many.
A public meeting was held in the town last night to consider a legal challenge to the Department's plan to house the asylum-seekers in two local guesthouses.
A spokesman for residents opposed to the plan, Mr Paddy Butler, said they were not trying to stop asylum-seekers coming, "but we're definitely trying to get the numbers reduced".
"I do think that 90 is too many. We have to try to integrate them in smaller numbers, so we're getting legal advice and we want to put it to the people of Tramore. If the number was reduced we could help them in every way," he told the Waterford radio station WLR.
Mr Butler said people in the town were not being told what was happening with regard to asylum-seekers.
"There's an awful lot of speculation, that we're anti-this and we're anti-that, but that's not really the case," he said. The meeting was necessary, however, for residents to decide how they wanted to approach the issue.
The 90 asylum-seekers are to be accommodated from next month in Ocean View House and Atlantic House, owned respectively by Mr John D. Moore and his brother, Mr Jonathan Moore. Both men have signed agreements to that effect with the Office of Public Works which expire in a year.
Last week the two said that apart from the economic benefits of full occupancy and the creation of 15 full-time jobs arising from the arrangement, they also wished to shoulder their share of the responsibility for housing asylum-seekers.
A comment made by a Fianna Fail member of Tramore Town Commissioners, Mr Ben Gavin, who opposes the Department's plan, has been strongly criticised by the editor of The Big Issues magazine, Ms Rosemarie Meleady.
Mr Gavin said holidaymakers did not want to be "hassled by 15 people on the prom selling The Big Issues".
Ms Meleady said the remark was "totally reprehensible". The magazine was sold by all in need of immediate and necessary help regardless of race, creed or colour, and sellers had to adhere to a code of conduct.
In Sligo, the deputy mayor has ruled out locating a flotel for asylum-seekers in the town's bay on the grounds that it is inhumane.
Mr Sean MacManus, a Sinn Fein alderman, is a member of Sligo Harbour Board. He said the Government had been in touch with the board over the possibility of locating a flotel in Sligo Bay.
Mr MacManus said there would quite rightly be uproar from animal-rights groups if a ship of cattle were to be moored in Sligo Bay. He said housing asylum-seekers in a flotel would create major health and safety problems.
"These flotels, which will effectively be prison ships, are not a solution to the refugee housing crisis," he said.
"They are indicative of the failure of the Government to deal properly with this issue . . . It is clearly an inhumane way to treat people who are asylum-seekers and refugees."
