O’Gorman is sent back to drawing board and told ‘put more work in’ on asylum centre plan
INTEGRATION Minister Roderic O’Gorman was told by Coalition leaders to go back to the drawing board with his plans to build new asylum centres, due to insufficient detail in his proposals.
The Green Party TD, who has long flagged that the State is set to build or buy at least six new accommodation centres for asylum seekers, brought a memo on the plan to the leaders’ meeting a number of weeks ago.
It comes as there were 2,062 claims for asylum in the first six weeks of this year, compared to 1,769 in the same period last year. However, similar figures for Ukrainians show a big fall off, with 1,655 arriving in the first six weeks this year, compared to 4,182 in the same period last year – a 65% decrease.
It had originally been flagged Mr O’Gorman would publish plans alongside Helen McEntee’s announcement that a number of countries had been added to the safe list a number of weeks ago. But this did not materialise.
Multiple Government sources have now confirmed the plan was not ready to go to Cabinet.
One senior source said: ‘It has been discussed with leaders, and as you know, the memo is planned shortly.’ While keen to stress Cabinet was not divided over the matter, one source said: ‘There were just naturally some questions and views across the parties about it. It’s an important issue and it will come to the Government when it is ready.’
The source stressed this was not an ‘unusual approach’ on big issues and this was why there were Cabinet committees, adding: ‘The approach has evolved as the situation with asylum and migration evolves.’
Another source said: ‘He produced a paper for leaders about two weeks ago. They weren’t necessarily enamoured by the level of detail in it. He was asked to put a bit more work into it.
‘The paper itself identified the need, but not the actual locations. It might have said we need X [number of] centres, but it didn’t go into detail. They went “this needs a bit more detail”. We haven’t had anything more since then. It will come again in a few weeks.’
It is understood the leaders want to know where the proposed sites are going to be.
‘I think that’s what a lot of people have been relying on, by saying “we are moving away from private to publicly-owned”,’ said the source. ‘But until we know where they are going to be, then we are stuck in this kind of circle for a prolonged period of time.’
While there is some concern about naming the sites so far in advance, there is another school of thought in Government that giving people time to ‘get used’ to the idea of a site in their area is a better way to approach the issue. ‘They will probably have to name some, just to show it is not aspirational and it is in train,’ said the source.
Mr O’Gorman has had other memos rebuffed. The Irish Daily Mail understands his proposal to use student accommodation in Cork was repeatedly put on the provisional Cabinet agenda but was rebuffed by a variety of ministers. The Mail also reported earlier this year that Leo Varadkar had to allow Mr O’Gorman to raise the issue of housing migrants and Ukrainians under ‘any other business’ at Cabinet after proposals were repeatedly not allowed to move out from the Cabinet sub-committee on Ukraine. The move resulted in one of the most significant Cabinet rows at the time.
A spokesman for Mr O’Gorman said: ‘There’s discussion between ourselves, Taoiseach and Tánaiste on it. The minister met with leaders a couple of weeks ago and that discussion is ongoing. There’s a memo being worked on which we’ve flagged publicly in terms of moving to State-owned reception centres.’
Fianna Fáil TD Jim O’Callaghan has called on the Department of Justice to look again at countries on the ‘safe list’. Asylum seekers from these countries are less likely to get applications approved as the Department of Justice has determined their country is safe to live in. Mr O’Callaghan stressed that rules around immigration were designed to protect people under threat from ‘persecution’ and not just people who live under ‘conservative’ regimes. The Netherlands had upwards of 30 countries on their safe list and asked why Ireland was not taking the same approach.
‘Asked to put a bit more work into it’