As service at the Refugee Application Centre in Dublin may be disrupted again today, the Government announced it will table an amendment to the Lab our Party motion of no confidence in the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue.
Meanwhile, the chairman of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Equality and Wo men's Rights, has called for a public hearing into the asylum-seekers' controversy.
Mr Eoin Ryan (FF) said it would clear up a lot of the issues and misinformation surrounding the crisis. He will propose the holding of the hearing, to which representatives from all the agencies dealing with asylum-seekers should be invited, at tomorrow's meeting of the committee. Committee members visited the Refugee Centre in Mount Street last Thursday and will draw up a report on their findings.
The wording of the amendment to the Labour motion of no confidence will be decided at today's Cabinet meeting and will express confidence in Mr O'Donoghue as Minister. Fine Gael and the Green Party are supporting the Labour motion which "deplores" the Minister's failure to deal effectively with areas for which he has ministerial responsibility, including the "total inadequacy of his policy on asylum-seekers".
It also criticises him for prison overcrowding and suicides, for the renewed spate of armed robberies and ongoing industrial relations and morale problems in the Garda.
The Eastern Health Board said yesterday it could not guarantee full services at the Refugee Application Centre from this morning despite the industrial dispute apparently being resolved over a week ago.
Negotiations between the unions and the board on how an agreement, reached on November 9th, would be implemented broke down yesterday, and last night the board asked the Labour Relations Commission to intervene in the dispute between it and Impact and SIPTU, representing community welfare officers at the centre.
The commission is expected to look at the situation today.
The Office of Public Works has secured additional office space at Oisin House on Town send Street and has promised to recruit 10 extra welfare officers to join the existing 15. Three of the new officers started work yesterday. The board has asked Impact "to detail precisely any health and safety issues which have not already been addressed".
The union's assistant general secretary, Mr Sean McHugh, said the board was not able to deliver on commitments which were the remit of the Departments of Justice, Social Welfare and Environment. The additional building was "inadequate" and did not have enough public space. It was up to the employer to provide a safe working environment.