13 new centres for international protection applicants opened without notice since September
The war in Ukraine and number of people displaced has helped stretch Ireland’s international protection apparatus to its limit. Picture: Markus Schreiber/AP
There were 13 new emergency accommodation centres for international protection applicants opened since last September without any local representatives being briefed, according to new figures.
The new data, provided by the Department of Children to the Public Accounts Committee, which has responsibility for Ireland’s asylum system, shows that 55 such centres were opened between September and late February as pressure on the asylum system intensified.
The ongoing war in Ukraine and the enormous number of people it has displaced, together with an unprecedented number of unrelated international asylum applications, has stretched Ireland’s existing international protection apparatus to its limit.
The opening of emergency accommodation centres without consultation or notice being given to locals has been a source of some controversy in recent months, with such incidents providing talking points for elements of the far-right.
Just over a quarter of the 19 emergency centres opened in Dublin — which accommodate 1,979 people — were opened without prior notification to stakeholders, including the local authority, the department said. The five centres in question are located at Parnell Square, Inns Quay, Naas Rd, and two at Saggart in West Dublin.
Half of the four centres opened in Wicklow in that time were likewise delivered without prior notice to local stakeholders, with the remaining six located in Donegal, Galway, Kerry, Louth, and Mayo.
However, all but one of those centres which were opened without notice were established in either September or October of last year, the department said, the exception being Kilbride Army Camp in Wicklow, which has been accommodating 124 people since January 28.
The department said that previous processes in place to inform local stakeholders — including the local authority, the HSE, An Garda Síochána, Tusla, and the Department of Social Protection — had to be abandoned.
“The intense pressure to provide accommodation at scale and at pace has meant that the kind of advance engagement previously undertaken is not possible to the same degree,” said Kevin McCarthy, secretary general of the Department of Children.
While the majority of emergency centres are in Dublin, a further 16 are located in just three counties, with eight in Donegal, four in Galway, and four in Wicklow. Cork has two centres accommodating 180 people, at Fermoy and Mallow, opened in November and December 2022.
All told the 55 centres have capacity for 4,175 asylum seekers.
Mr McCarthy added that there are currently 19,936 applicants for international protection living in 176 centres across Ireland. Separately, 51,297 people are registered as being beneficiaries of temporary protection (BOTP) across the country, 7,206 of them in Dublin, 6,392 in Kerry, and 4,625 in Cork.
Meanwhile, the department noted new figures showing that Ireland’s intake of 70,752 people seeking international protection amounts to 1.4% of the country’s population, which is relatively average in terms of the numbers accommodated by the various European countries.
That 70,752 represents 1.8% of the overall number of people seeking asylum in the European Union.
By contrast, the Czech Republic and Poland currently accommodate 1.396m seekers of international protection between them — 35.9% of the total for the entirety of the EU and the European Economic Area.
Germany has accepted 875,353 refugees — 1% of the country’s overall population.
Greece, Malta, Slovenia, and Spain have among the lowest scores for accommodating the displaced by percentage of population, with France the lowest, having taken in just 0.1% of its population, or 85,038 people.
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