Calamity awaits if Government keeps its head in sand over capital’s ‘shanty town’
In his first speech as leader of Fine Gael, Simon Harris talked of a “firmer” migration system and having “pride again in our capital” – the test of that will be whether he lets the huge asylum-seeker tent encampment on Lower Mount Street continue any longer. As a proud resident of Dublin city centre I am appalled to see how the Government’s failed migration policy is disfiguring our nation’s capital. This policy failure has created a large tent encampment of International Protection Applicants (IPAs) around the International Protection Office (IPO) on Lower Mount Street for the third time in 12 months, leading to a humanitarian crisis for the 170 men there and an intolerable situation for local residents and businesses.
People are now avoiding the area and businesses are at risk of closure because it is such a struggle for them to stay trading with what is around them. Local residents are sympathetic with the men in the tent encampments and have tried to live with this situation, but this has gone on for over a year now and people’s patience can only go so far.
In a joint-letter to the media last week, 20 residents who live adjacent to the encampment described in distressing terms how they have experienced their “living conditions deteriorate drastically over the last couple of months” as their “buildings are encircled by tents to the extent that people on the ground floor cannot put their hand outside their window without touching a tent”.
Their biggest frustration has “been met with silence when we have contacted the authorities for assistance”, with Integration Minister Roderic O’Gorman’s office completely uncontactable and unresponsive. The encampment is now spreading through the wider area and if let grow further all control will be lost. Dublin risks being permanently blighted by downtown tent encampments like in San Francisco. I assume Mr Harris doesn’t want that to be his legacy.
There have been understandable but unhelpful calls to look at emergency-type sanitation interventions at the IPO. But Lower Mount Street is not an appropriate place for a massive encampment of over 100 tents that is rapidly becoming a shanty town.
Since the middle of last month a structured, state-provided emergency option has been in operation at Crooksling in Co Dublin with security, sanitation and basic services. While some people have relocated there, the tent encampment in the city has been allowed to continue and to grow.
The encampment now needs to be fully cleared. The men currently in tents at the IPO need to be moved to designated facilities like Crooksling, and no further tents should be allowed to be pitched on public streets. While Crooksling is still only an emergency response, public health groups working with the IPAs are clear that it is much better than sleeping on the streets.
And if the shanty town continues to grow further there will be calamity, for both the men there, and our capital. Despite the growing health and safety dangers, it appears that State agencies interacting with these asylum-seekers are not directing and transporting them to Crooksling, so the shanty town grows daily.
This isn’t good enough. The agencies responsible need to take charge. One school of thought is that Government has deliberately let the tent encampment emerge as a deterrent, but given the 72pc increase in IP applications so far this year it’s clear this is not having any deterrent effect. All it has done is create a health and safety crisis for IPAs and nearby residents, while defacing our city and fuelling tensions.
On this major Dublin thoroughfare in and out of the city, only a few minutes walk from where Mr Harris was elected as Taoiseach, the ever-growing shanty town is a visible symbol of an inadequate IP system and a lack of pride in our capital. The Government urgently needs to task someone with actually physically controlling the site and working to clear it. The buck-passing between the various agencies needs to end.
An aspect of this crisis that hasn’t received enough attention is that by dumping over 1,700 asylum-seekers on the streets, the Government has undermined years of hard work by the Dublin Region Homeless Executive (DRHE) and charities to keep rough sleeper numbers in Dublin low (usually less than 100), despite the intense housing crisis and resulting homelessness crisis.
For the last three years I’ve been an outside member of the city’s housing committee, which also monitors the city’s homeless services, and I’ve seen the amazing work that staff and volunteers do to keep our citizens sheltered when relationships break up, tenancies end or unemployment strikes.
This work has not been easy. The current system which puts hundreds of men on our streets only for the Government to then walk away is a dereliction of duty that insults all the hard work that has taken place. If the new Taoiseach wants to show he has pride in our capital he needs to start on Lower Mount Street.