Minister for Integration Roderic O’Gorman has said his department received just one offer of accommodation following his appeal last week for government-owned premises that could be used as temporary accommodation.
The offer came from the Department of Defence for the Kilbride Range in Wicklow he told RTÉ Radio’s News at One. “As a government we have to do more.”
It was not acceptable that Ireland could not provide accommodation for 171 people he said, referring to international protection applicants for whom no accommodation was available. That was a significant number, he said.
Mr O’Gorman said that while his department had received only one offer in terms of the immediate provision of bed spaces, he knew other departments had sent out requests for immediately available buildings.
“That's the key thing from my department's perspective. We need two buildings that can be immediately used, immediately occupied, recognising the very significant immediate need we have to accommodate international protection applicants.”
Accommodation shortage
His department has taken contact details for the 171 international protection applicants currently without accommodation, and they will be contacted as soon as accommodation becomes available, he explained.
“So in the last number of weeks when we've had this accommodation shortage. We've been able to accommodate 119 individuals who initially we weren't able to provide a bed for.”
When asked where the 171 people were being accommodated at present, the Minister replied: “We understand people are being accommodated across a range of mechanisms. Some are staying with family members, some are finding accommodation elsewhere.
“I suppose we're not in a position to keep a kind of direct contact with people. But as I say, we have taken everyone's contact details, and as soon as new accommodation becomes available, we look to bring people back into the accommodation system.
“As a government, we have to do more. It's not acceptable that 171 people can't be accommodated. That's Ireland not meeting either its legal requirements under EU law, or its moral obligations to people fleeing conflict.
“Collectively, as a government, even though we recognise a huge amount has been done over the last year in terms of meeting the needs of those fleeing to this country, we're going to have to dig deeper as a Government now and make sure we can provide accommodation for all who need it.”
In the meantime, CityWest remained closed to any new arrivals, said Mr O’Gorman. “We're accommodating about 750 people in total there at the moment. But we aren't bringing any new people into the accommodation there. It's still open in terms of Ukrainians being processed to get their relevant papers under the Temporary Protection Directive.”
'Challenging' situation
The accommodation situation remained “very challenging” he said.
The Minister said that he was aware that a number of hotels who currently provide International Protection accommodation will be reverting to tourism in the next number of months which would provide a further challenge.
“In terms of hotels that provide accommodation to Ukrainians, by and large, as we look to renew contracts, hotels have agreed to renew. We're still very alive to the risk that some of these hotels, particularly as we get closer to the summer season, may decide to revert to tourism, their tourism offering. And that again, will put us under extra pressure.
“We paid out over €500 million to hotels since the Ukrainian crisis began to cover the costs of accommodating Ukrainian displaced persons. We've taken on about 700 contracts. There are some backlogs in terms of the payment of invoices at the moment, some backlog built up before Christmas. We were able to reduce them down.
“But certainly in January, I know backlogs have built up again and we're moving staff at the moment into the payments unit in order for us to be able to process purchase orders and provide invoices as quickly as possible.
“There is a staffing issue there in terms of being able to process the very large number of invoices the department is now dealing with.”
