Cost of housing refugees in private accommodation three times that of State-run facilities
The D Hotel in Drogheda was signed over for asylum seeker accommodation without prior notice being given to local representatives. Picture: Leon Farrell/ RollingNews.ie
The average cost for a bed for either asylum seekers or Ukrainian refugees in privately operated accommodation is nearly three times that paid for the same bed in a State-run location, it has emerged.
The Department of Integration said the average cost per night in the roughly 180 private accommodation centres around the country is €76 per night.
That compares with the €30 paid per bed per night in the State-run accommodation, which are far fewer in number.
Department of Integration secretary general Kevin McCarthy revealed the figures at Thursday's hearing before the Public Accounts Committee.
Prior to doing so, Mr McCarthy said he was reluctant to reveal the average costs due to reasons of commercial sensitivity.
Before clarifying the figures, under questioning from Sinn Féin’s Imelda Munster, Mr McCarthy was asked if State-run accommodation was significantly cheaper than the private variety.
He replied “not really”, adding the two State-run centres at Athlone and Knockalisheen, Co Clare, were “probably the two best-known" of the non-privately-operated accommodations on offer.
He noted a new accommodation strategy for international protection applicants was recently agreed in order to move away from the privately-owned model, with 14,000 beds to be in place in State-owned centres by 2028.
Requests for asylum in Ireland jumped dramatically over the first three months of this year, with 5,100 applications received, more than 2,200 more than were received in the same timeframe last year.
Mr McCarthy defended his department’s performance in sourcing accommodation within hotels in rural towns, saying there were “competing public interests at play”.
He said the sheer “scale of the pressure we’ve been under” had driven such decisions, which most recently saw the D Hotel in Drogheda, the last hotel in the town, signed over for asylum seeker accommodation without prior notice being given to local representatives.
“We’re trying as best we can to be able to offer accommodation to people,” he said.
When the final hotel in Roscrea, Co Tipperary, was contracted to provide asylum seeker accommodation, the Government elected to buy a second disused hotel in the locality to make up for the loss of the former.
Mr McCarthy said the loss of a final hotel to a locality is “one of the new criteria being taken into account now” in the sourcing of accommodation.
He acknowledged providing accommodation in rural areas without informing local residents in advance has caused substantial issues across the country, most recently in Newtownmountkennedy in Co Wicklow.
Local Sinn Féin TD for the area John Brady said the department had made “liars” of local representatives by denying the location in question was to be used for refugee accommodation until the last moment.
Mr McCarthy said often his department would also not be aware a site was being prepared for use while those preparations were being conducted.
He added his department’s community engagement team, formed last October, “operates to a standard protocol” and while he could “understand the frustration” over how the information was being spread, it was nevertheless “important that information is released in a managed way”, he said.
When asked why the HSE’s Baggot Street Hospital was not being used to provide accommodation to people who are instead living in tents, Mr McCarthy replied the hospital had been ruled out “on cost grounds” as it is a listed building.
This statement drew derision from PAC vice-chair Catherine Murphy, who noted Ryevale House in her own Kildare constituency is also a listed building, and had been converted to asylum seeker accommodation without planning permission to do so regardless.
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