New Dublin migrant camp will be ‘moved on’, minister says

There will be an “operation” to clear the latest makeshift migrant camp along a canal in Dublin, the housing minister has said.

It comes after approximately 30 tents were erected along the Grand Canal one day after a major multi-agency action removed 163 asylum seekers from an encampment just metres down the waterway.

Last week, a similar action saw roughly 290 other international protection applicants removed from a camp near the International Protection Office.

On Friday, Darragh O’Brien said there had been a meeting involving the Taoiseach on the matter on Thursday night. He said: “We’ve been very clear that that is not where we want to see people.

“We don’t want to see asylum seekers in tents, thus an operation will be put in place between our departments to move those tents on and move the people on to safe and secure accommodation – that’s what we intend to do.”

Mr O’Brien was speaking to reporters alongside Integration Minister Roderic O’Gorman at an event in Hollystown, Dublin.

Mr O’Gorman said “the key issue” has been the availability of accommodation but this has improved within the last two weeks. More than 1,800 asylum seekers are without an offer for State-provided accommodation.

Asked about the long-term plan for accommodating asylum seekers, the integration minister said there was a need to move away from over-reliance on commercial providers.

He added: “We’re acutely aware we need to do more.” At a separate event in Dublin, Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly said that it is “not reasonable” to ask any country, including Ireland, to find suitable accommodation for every person seeking international protection.

Speaking in Dublin on Friday, Mr Donnelly said: “We can’t have a situation in the capital city or indeed in any city in the country, where we have large tented encampments popping up.

“It’s not something that can go on and the Government is quite right on moving to address that. We’re dealing with a situation in Ireland, similar to a situation across much of the Western world, where we have quite rightly taken in about 100,000 people fleeing Russia’s invasion of their country (Ukraine).

“They have been welcomed here, they are welcomed here and we’re doing exactly the right thing for those people. At the same time, the number of people seeking international protection has gone up from – it used to be about 2,000 to 3,000 a year – it went up to nearly 9,000 last year, projections of 14,000 or 15,000 or more this year.

“That’s the level of demand that Ireland is dealing with, it’s a level of demand being dealt with right across Europe. It’s simply not reasonable to expect any government, be it the Irish government, be it a different government, or indeed any country to be able to simply absorb so many people without there being issues.”