People are “frustrated” with the time it is taking the Department of Integration to finalise a long-term plan to address accommodation shortages for refugees, Minister for Higher Education Simon Harris has said.
Mr Harris urged his Cabinet colleague, the Green Party Minister for Integration Roderic O’Gorman, to speed up delivery of a long-term plan to address the shortage of accommodation for refugees.
Speaking at a St Patrick’s weekend event in London, the Fine Gael Minister suggested that it was “unacceptable” that refugees were left to sleep in “inhumane conditions” in tents in Dublin city centre.
“We need to show the Irish people as quickly as possible what the plan is now when it comes to accommodation,” he said on Friday, as he visited the Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith, west London, where he met members of the Irish building community.
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He said the presence of refugees in more than 100 tents on the street near the International Protection office on Mount Street in Dublin showed the “urgent need” for a proper response, and also for speedy interim measures to improve conditions in the tent encampment in the short term.
“Most people in Ireland appreciate how challenging this situation is. I do understand the scale of demand and the pressure the system is dealing with, but I also understand that people want to see Government respond,” said Mr Harris.
“Irish people are getting understandably frustrated they haven’t yet seen a plan beyond the emergency response. I know Roderic O’Gorman works extremely hard on these issues. [But] I really hope that plan can come to Cabinet quickly.”
A spokesman for Mr O’Gorman’s department said it was urgently working on “a solution which we hope will be put into operation as soon as possible”.
“We are not in a position to comment any further due to security considerations,” he said. The current situation is unsatisfactory and every effort is being made by the department to resolve it.”
Mr Harris said that interim measures to alleviate the conditions faced by refugees in tents around Mount Street should focus on, for example, giving them better toilet and washing facilities. The refugees in tents must walk more than 20 minutes to use their designated toilet facilities.
“I don’t think it is acceptable that [large numbers of tents are allowed to] spring up in an almost ad hoc manner. There needs to be some kind of interim solution found that, even if it’s not where we wish to be, at least people can be safe and have access to sanitation, and that it is more organised and less ad hoc.”
Mr Harris agreed that the situation at Mount Street was an “emergency”.
But he rebuffed a suggestion that the apparent tolerance of it so far is evidence that the Government had run out of ideas or was exhausted. Fine Gael, his party, has been in power 13 years this month.
“I have never been more energised. But now also with the benefit of significant experience. This must be the only job in the world where experience is presented as a negative. Experience is a good thing,” he said.
There are currently 1,308 male international protection applicants who are without State-provided accommodation, according to the latest figures from the Department of Integration, published on Friday.
A total of 1,897 single male asylum seekers have arrived into the State since December 4th, when the Government announced it was no longer able to guarantee accommodation for new arrivals.
A total of 202 were offered accommodation after a vulnerability assessment, while a further 387 were offered accommodation at a later point
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