Dáil watchdog to examine scale of prof iteering from housing refugees
Public Accounts Committee conf irms it is to investigate asylum ‘cottage industry’
THE Dáil spending watchdog is set to investigate huge levels of ‘profiteering’ in the refugee accommodation sector, the Irish Mail on Sunday has learned.
The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) probe comes after the MoS recently revealed that five companies were paid more than €100m by the State to provide accommodation to asylum seekers and refugees in a six-month period last year.
It also comes as new figures today show that 129 companies were paid €1m-plus to provide accommodation services for the three months between last July and September.
The PAC has become increasingly concerned about the State’s response to the asylum crisis.
Following a suggestion from committee member and Fine Gael TD Alan Dillon, the watchdog has agreed that the soaring asylum accommodation costs should be an area of ‘special focus’.
PAC chair Brian Stanley confirmed the committee will look into ‘the provision of accommodation and facilities by the Department of Integration’.
He said the PAC is keen to examine accommodation ‘expenditure and how value for money is being achieved’.
The Sinn Féin TD told the MoS: ‘[Tánaiste] Micheál Martin said two
years ago we could cater for 200,000 [asylum seekers]. To date, there has been no plan when it comes to those who have arrived.
‘Instead, we have had departmental officials scrambling around sourcing convents, old pubs, and empty hotels. It is not an orderly process. Our concern in the PAC is to ensure that the interests of taxpayers and of asylum seekers are adequately protected.’
A PAC source added: ‘It is a new phenomenon. It is almost a cottage industry in rural Ireland. The country is being scoured for old pubs and derelict hotels. It is lucrative too. Fellows who had nothing are now driving around in SUVs
and wearing Rolex and Cartier watches. We were wondering what would ever happen to deserted pubs surrounded by briars and thistles, and now they are all full.’
PAC vice chair Catherine Murphy said there is ‘an unnerving absence of transparency surrounding the current process’ of paying out huge sums of money to private accommodation providers.
She told the MoS: ‘We understand that we are dealing with an emergency, but these are not department-built facilities; they come from the private sector and up to now the main qualification is tax compliance. The absence of visible processes is a concern, not just in terms of expenditure but also regulation, health and safety.’
The Kildare North TD added: ‘We have a bad habit of creating problems and then building backwards. There are serious shortcomings in the current system. I know it is an emergency, but robust regulation is required. Hopefully, any failure in that regard won’t come back to bite us.’
Her fellow PAC member Verona Murphy expressed concern at how buildings earmarked for asylum housing are able to bypass normal planning regulations.
She said: ‘The concern is that these sites are exempted developments: they are not subject to planning permission. Given that the pay is €18,000 [a year] per bed, you have to ask, are people purchasing to make a fast buck?’
Criticising the current ‘chaotic regime’, Ms Murphy added: ‘This is seriously affecting integration. The process is not doing any favours to communities or to migrants who want to work. You have immigrants being cast adrift in rural Ireland, while much better facilities like the old Baggot Street hospital [in Dublin 4] are not used.’
Another PAC source said: ‘There has to be a real concern over profiteering. There are no controls. It’s panic stations, buy, buy, buy… It’s a
‘Fellows driving SUVs and wearing Rolex watches’
‘Immigrants cast adrift in rural Ireland’
new rural cottage industry. It’s an astonishing situation.
‘The State is forking out billions a year to private providers of accommodation in every deserted village in the country, and we haven’t built a single room where it can house asylum seekers or refugees. So much for ending direct provision. We are creating a monster.’
Integration Minister Roderic O’Gorman is working on a revised white paper which the Government says will bolster the State’s response to the sharp rise in asylum seekers and refugees fleeing the Ukraine war to come here.
Plans for six new State-built reception centres are among the measures that will be unveiled – a reprise of promises already made in the Programme for Government – along with enhanced funding for communities that host asylum seekers.
But one minister warned: ‘We need to move at speed. The current system is unsustainable, and it is polarising people. We need to stop drifting and intervene more decisively, but we are looking at this more in hope than expectation.’