MOVES TO RELOCATE REFUGEES
IT WILL become increasingly necessary to remove Ukrainian refugees from accommodation in areas where they have settled and started working as the Department of Integrations winds down its contracts, an Oireachtas Committee has heard.
The Department of Integration was in front of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) yesterday to discuss a range of issues, including spending on Ukrainian refugees and international protection seeker accommodation.
During the course of the hearing, Fianna Fail TD James O’Connor spoke of a “town where a number of people have settled into the community with their children” and have started working.
Mr O’Connor said: “All of a sudden, they are being told that there may be a potential for them to be relocated to other counties.
“Are you aware of how concerning this is for those people, but also when we were talking about community buy-in and how much that can corrode the community buy-in when you remove people from a community that they’re integrated in?
“Their children attend local schools and then you pull them back out and they will be replaced with new people coming into those communities.”
Fall
Secretary General Kevin McCarthy indicated that as numbers of arriving Ukrainian refugees continue to fall, the department is no longer contracting additional accommodation from new or existing providers.
“All of the accommodation that those people have been offered is on a temporary basis,” he said.
“It’s made clear to him from the very outset that this is temporary accommodation in the context of a crisis response.”
Mr O’Connor said tensions in communities across the country needs to be reduced as this has been “very badly handled by the [Integration] minister [Roderic O’Gorman] and the Department”.
Sinn Fein’s John Brady, meanwhile, accused the Government of a “shambolic approach” to handling accommodation.
He said he had been “lied to” about the use of a facility in Newtownmountkennedy in Co Wicklow.