State spending over €42m a month on refugee accommodation centres

At the Ashbourne House in Cork, the price per person accommodated was €1,057.

The Government is spending more than €42m each month on the rental, management and maintenance of accommodation centres for asylum seekers, new figures reveal.

All told some €42,191,896 is being paid to private providers across the country for the use of 180 centres of varying natures on a calendar month basis by the Department of Integration, the figures show.

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Dublin sees the highest outlay of €16m each month for the use of 48 international protection accommodation services (Ipas) centres, the Department said.

Donegal, meanwhile, plays host to 16 centres — roughly half of them in Letterkenny — the second highest figure by county in the country as a whole, at a cost of €2.5m per month, despite having only the 13th largest population in the State.

Cork and Wicklow are the only other counties with more than nine centres, playing host to 10 apiece at a cost of €2.2m and €2.5m per month respectively.

The highest average outlay each month is in Meath where the six centres cost €338,000 per month. They include the emergency reception and orientation centre in the former holiday camp at Mosney.

The highest average outlay each month is in Meath where the six centres cost €338,000 per month. They include the emergency reception and orientation centre in the former holiday camp at Mosney. Picture: Eamonn Farrell/Rollingnews.ie

The lowest payments by county are in Longford and Leitrim, with monthly bills of €89,299 and €167,000 respectively.

Included in the numbers are breakdowns by occupancy of 57 hotel contracts currently held by the Department in order to provide Ipas accommodation, hosting 1,906 people — 1,306 of whom are children.

Those contracts indicate a certain disparity in price per asylum seeker per month – with monthly charges per person ranging from €2,031 at the Crowne Plaza in Blanchardstown, Dublin, to €2,750 at the at the Ballymun Travelodge, to €3,454 at Galway’s Continental Hotel and €3,526 at the Crowne Plaza in Dundalk.

In Cork, prices per person accommodated varied from €1,057 at the Ashbourne House to €2,727 at the city’s Travelodge. 

Elsewhere in Munster, the King Thomond centre in Clare averaged €2,426 per person per month, while Limerick’s Travelodge reflected rates of €3,240 for each of the 110 people accommodated there.

Just seven of the centres described by the department are State-owned, with management costs totaling €682,000 each month.

The department said it currently has 700 provider contracts with owners of accommodation varying from hotels to hostels, B&Bs to holiday villages and former nursing homes.

Roughly €37m is being spent on hotel accommodation each month at present, it said.

All told the Department is currently accommodating roughly 80,000 people in State-funded accommodation between those fleeing the war in Ukraine and those seeking international protection.

More than 81,000 people have arrived in Ireland since the war in Ukraine began in February 2022, 59,000 of whom have sought accommodation from the Department of Integration.

Some 53,000 refugees of the war have been accommodated in longer-term settings since the conflict began, 33,000 of whom are female, while 56% of that total are aged between 25 and 64.

Of the 80,000 Ukrainians who have been deemed beneficiaries of temporary protection in the past 15 months, 31% of them have been minors, the Department said.