Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 18 April 2024
Public Accounts Committee
2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 40 - Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth
9:30 am
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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That is fine.
I want to ask about Baggot Street hospital and the particular reasoning behind not having it offered while we have asylum seekers sleeping in tents. It is deplorable that we make such a meal out of this. We have a perfectly good building that could accommodate hundreds of applicants but we have them in tents and we are fighting over rural accommodation all over the country where protests are taking place. We have a perfectly acceptable former hospital owned by the State, the HSE being the biggest land hoarder or accommodation centre hoarder in the country, with 170 buildings. Why has the Department not insisted that Baggot Street hospital be facilitated as an IPAS centre?