New building for refugees may be halted by legal battle
A NEW State-run accommodation centre for asylum seekers may be blocked by a pending legal battle, the Irish Mail on Sunday can reveal.
The 40-acre plot of land at Crooksling, Co. Wicklow, is a key part of the plan unveiled by Integration Minister Roderic O’Gorman this week, to provide accommodation for 35,000 asylum seekers over the next four years.
But the contract signed by the minister to lease the land from the HSE may not be valid due to a pending legal case.
According to Independent Wicklow councillor Gerry O’Neill, legal documents say that the land was donated to the State, provided it was only used for the sick and the elderly.
Mr O’Neill and some of his colleagues now want a meeting with Mr O’Gorman and Health Minister Stephen Donnelly, in relation to the plans for the centre on the former St Brigid’s nursing-home complex, that closed four years ago.
Cllr O’Neill told the MoS: ‘We are meeting with our legal advisors next week and what we are basing our arguments on is a Deed of Trust which states that the land was gifted and can only be used for the sick and the elderly.
‘We have been having this row for years with the HSE. What we are dealing with here is land grabbing and bully-boy tactics by the HSE. The site has been lying idle for four years and the HSE has spent a fortune on security. The HSE is not entitled to lease the land and they are not entitled to use it for refugees. How can they give a lease for land they don’t own?’
Mr O’Neill said a legal document signed on May 5, 1856, by the Governors of St Patrick’s Hospital and a John James Verschoyle specified how the land could be used.
According to another document dated September 29, 1909, the site ‘has the benefit of an indemnity against payment of the rent and other sums’ as agreed between a Sarah W Campbell and others and The Joint Dublin Hospital Board.
The former nursing home building was set ablaze by suspected anti-migrant activists two months ago, due to claims that asylum seekers could be housed there.
It was also at the centre of a controversial plan over St Patrick’s weekend, to move several asylum seekers – who had been camped in tents outside the International Protection Office on Dublin’s Mount Street – to the site.
Department of Integration officials this weekend insisted that they were not aware of any legal issues over the Department lease agreement with the HSE.
A spokesman said: ‘The Department has signed a lease for the use of the Crooksling site. The Department is not aware of any impediment concerning the current use of the centre.’
A Department of Health spokeswoman said: ‘The Department of Health has engaged with the Department of Children, Equality,
Disability, Integration and Youth (DCEDIY) and with the Department of Housing over the course of 2022, 2023 and into 2024 in relation to the sourcing of properties which may be suitable for use in both the provision of housing and in providing accommodation for refugees.’