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Tent camps a manifestation of Coalition’s inability to get to grips with crisis

Asylum seekers along Grand Canal being moved as advisory group raises concerns about Government strategy

A truck with a claw lifting tents along the Grand Canal after International Protection applicants were told to move on. Photograph: Kitty Holland

Cormac McQuinn's face
Cormac McQuinn
Thu May 9 2024 - 07:34

For the second time in two weeks State agencies are relocating asylum seekers from tents in Dublin city centre.

Last week, it was the long-running encampment at the International Protection Office on Mount Street with 285 men offered alternative accommodation.

This week, it is the people living in more than 100 tents that subsequently sprang up along the Grand Canal with an operation to relocate the inhabitants beginning this morning.

The situation is the physical manifestation of the Government’s struggle to get to grips with the refugee and asylum seeker accommodation crisis.

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As Jennifer Bray, Kitty Holland and Jack Horgan-Jones report today, there is a push by senior officials to significantly increase the level of tented accommodation offered at sites such as Crooksling in southwest Dublin in a bid to provide alternative locations for the asylum seekers to stay.

There is significant concern at the highest levels of Government, however, about what one source described on Wednesday night as “record levels” of new arrivals as the State is struggling to find extra space.

Government sources said that while processing times for asylum applications are “showing improvement” this is being matched with incoming applications which are “the highest on record”.

They said that last week there were more than 610 new arrivals, including families with children – a number that would normally arrive here over a two-month period.

The short-term plan is the State providing sites where people can be accommodated in tents.

Other measures include plans to add up to eight extra countries to the list of countries of safe origin while an expression of interest for office blocks and units needing refurbishment has gone out.

It comes as a Government-appointed advisory group has raised “questions and concerns” about the State’s new refugee accommodation strategy.

While welcoming parts of the plan, the Expert Advisory Group on Ending Direct Provision, chaired by former senior civil servant Catherine Day, flags issues with the plan in a letter to Minister for Integration Roderic O’Gorman released under Freedom of Information laws.

The group urged a time limit for the phasing out of “quick fix” accommodation in the private sector which may be unavoidable in the short term but does not meet the relevant standards.

The crisis in refugee and asylum seeker accommodation shows no sign of abating and no one will be too surprised if more tents appear elsewhere in the city centre over the coming days and weeks.

Best Reads

Miriam Lord’s Dáil sketch hones in on the Taoiseach’s needling of Sinn Féin over its stance on immigration and the party’s election literature that claims the party is opposed to open borders.

Acting Europe Correspondent Jack Power details the “substitution bench” for the European elections whereby the political parties and Independent candidates list people to replacements should they exit the European Parliament for any reason over the course of the five-year term. For instance sitting MEPs Mick Wallace and Clare Daly, who are standing for re-election in the South and Dublin constituencies respectively, each have the other at the top of their lists.

Jack Horgan-Jones reports that Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin briefed the Green Party on how Ireland is moving forward with plans to recognise Palestinian statehood in the coming weeks and will vote in favour of its membership of the United Nations on Friday.

Yesterday, Sinn Féin housing spokesman Eoin Ó Broin spoke to the Inside Politics podcast about why support for the party has declined in the polls and what the party would do to tackle the housing crisis.

Playbook

The Green Party is launching its local elections manifesto this morning.

Minister for Rural Development Heather Humphreys is taking Parliamentary Questions in the Dáil from 9am.

Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin is next up at 10.30am.

Leaders’ Questions is at noon.

Government Business is statements on progressing special education provision.

There will be a debate on an Independent Group motion on the challenges facing the childcare and nursing home sectors.

TDs will have an opportunity to raise topical issues from 7.18pm.

Minister of State for European Affairs Jennifer Carroll MacNeill will be in the Seanad for statements to mark Europe Day at 12.15pm.

Representatives of the University of Limerick will be before the Dáil’s Public Accounts Committee which, among other areas, is examining governance and associated due diligence of the university’s purchase of a city centre site in 2019. It starts at 9.30am. Arthur Beesley has a tee-up story.

The Committee on Public Petitions will consider a number of petitions including a “call for a Citizens’ Assembly on the Irish justice system; policing, crime and rehabilitation”. The committee meets at 1.30pm.

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