GET PITCH QUICK
■ New tents pop up just hours after canal clean-up ■ Taoiseach vowed ‘Team Ireland’ would sort issue
A MAJOR operation to remove asylum seeker camps from along Dublin’s Grand Canal yesterday ended with more tents popping up just hours later in nearby Ringsend and East Wall.
The joint initiative involving the Departments of Integration and Justice, An Garda Síochána, Dublin City Council, HSE and Waterways Ireland began at 6am.
Some 148 people were brought to Crooksling and another 15 were taken to the site of the former Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum in an operation costing €13,500.
But by noon, the fact that more tents had been erected in Ringsend and in East Wall had been raised in the Dail.
The apparent failure of the operation came despite promises from the Taoiseach that asylum seeker issues would no longer be shuffled between different State agencies, insisting: “This is Team Ireland.”
Action
Mr Harris had said that tent encampments will not be allowed to last for weeks or months on the streets of the capital.
He vowed the multi-agency operation approach to remove people from tents will continue.
“We took action in relation to Mount Street. Issues will arise from time to time, we saw an issue arise in the Grand Canal and action was taken,” the Taoiseach said.
“Swift action, you didn’t see a situation go on for weeks and months, as you had previously seen in relation to Mount Street. I’ve no doubt other issues will arise but the multi-agency response will continue.
“The days of people saying, ‘That’s not my issue, that’s for that department, that’s for that agency’, I don’t want to hear.
“This is Government. This is Ireland. This is Team Ireland.
“This is a real challenge we’re facing and it’s not about wearing the badge of your department or the badge of your agency. It’s about wearing common sense here on your sleeve and everything that you do.”
Mr Harris stated that multiagency meetings would continue.
He once again stated there needs to be a “broader response” to migration that moves beyond the accommodation question.
He added: “I’m having active conversations with a variety of ministers across the three parties in government to see what more proposals can be brought forward here in the coming days and weeks.”
The Taoiseach stated that the idea of allowing tents to build up on the Grand Canal or Mount Street for weeks and months is “not acceptable”.
“Those days are gone. Those days are over. It is not going to happen and the Government is absolutely united in relation to this,” he said.
Mr Harris also said that the approach to the accommodation crisis will not involve the “long-term erection or barrier-ing off parts of our city”.
He could not say how long the barriers could be up but said he does not expect them to be up for several months.
A Government spokesperson confirmed that the sites at Crooksling and Dundrum have “robust, weather-proof tents”.
Asylum seekers will have access to toilets and showers, health services, indoor areas where food is provided, facilities to charge phones and personal devices, access to transport to and from Dublin city centre and 24-hour onsite security.
Government agencies were on site at the canal from 6am yesterday morning to move people on from the site and onto five buses that would bring them to Dundrum and Crooksling.
The operation started so early, the Government press office said, so that “those at the site were at their tents before any daily movements were made”.
Voluntary
The estimated cost to Waterways Ireland of the clean-up operation is €13,500.
The press office further confirmed yesterday that the offer of accommodation in International Protection Accommodation Service (IPAS) centres is voluntary and some applicants are understood to have not taken up a place at their assigned centre. “IPAS will continue to engage with these applicants and efforts will be made to ensure these applicants do not continue to reside at the Grand Canal location,” they added.
Later on in the Dáil, Social Democrats TD Jennifer Whitmore told Tánaiste Micheál Martin that just six hours af