Department of Justice’s contract with Co Roscommon hotel will not be renewed

The Department of Justice has confirmed it will not renew a contract with a hotel in Ballaghaderreen, Co Roscommon which has housed Syrian refugees for more than a year.

The contract with the Abbeyfield Hotel expires in December 2019. The Department of Justice has chosen four other premises across the State which it says are suitable for future use as reception centres.

The Department would not identify where those premises are. The Abbeyfield was chosen in January 2017 to act as an Emergency Reception and Orientation Centre (EROC) for the mostly Syrian refugees for two years.

The hotel closed down in 2010 and remained derelict until 2015, when it was bought by a Cork consortium called Remcoll.

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The refugees first arrived in Ballaghaderreen in March 2017 and the town received a People of The Year Award in March 2018 for its efforts in welcoming the new residents.

However, in a statement to The Irish Times, the department confirmed the Abbeyfield Hotel was not successful in its application to be considered for future use once its current contract ends.

The department said it “would not be appropriate to specify the reasons for non-qualification” but stressed that “a failure to qualify” in no way “invalidates the current contract for EROC services in any existing centre”.

It gave examples of possible reasons for failure such as technical reasons like not having a lift or failing to complete all the necessary paperwork for the application. However, there is no suggestion that either issues applies to the Abbeyfield.

The current contractor of services at the hotel is Irish company Next Week & Co Ltd, whose directors are listed as Laurent Salmon and John Crean.

The department said it was “unlikely in the extreme that persons currently resident in the [Ballaghaderreen] EROC would still be there in December 2019.

“The nature of EROCs means that there is a constant moving of persons into the EROC from overseas and out to permanent homes in communities around Ireland.”

It was the initial intention of the department that the refugees would be moved out of the EROC and into the community after six months.

However, finding housing proved to be a substantial problem as the months wore on.

By April 2018, a total of 334 people had been resident at the Abbeyfield Hotel centre since it opened.

Some 119 of those had moved on to more permanent housing in other communities. In April, there were 215 people living there.