Dáil debates

Thursday, 2 June 2022

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions

Emergency Accommodation

9:00 am

Photo of Roderic O'GormanRoderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I will list and describe the various categories of such accommodation. There are seven State-owned accommodation centres in the interactional protection accommodation services, IPAS, portfolio. These buildings are owned by the State and companies are contracted as service providers at each of those centres. Commercial centres are privately owned and operated accommodation centres. Emergency reception and orientation centres, EROCs, refer to centres for refugees coming under the auspices of the international refugee protection programme, IRPP. When programme refugees are accepted in Ireland under the IRPP, they are generally accommodated in EROCs for some six to 12 months. This allows for initial orientation and assessment and access to services such as health and social welfare. Adults are provided with English language lessons and children attend primary school in the EROCs and local secondary schools. This time provides refugees with an opportunity to acclimatise in cultural terms, as well as to recover from the trauma associated with their journey to that point. It also provides refugees with an opportunity to assess necessary basic services in advance of their resettlement within the wider community.

Then we have emergency accommodation centres, which are temporary accommodation locations used by IPAS to provide accommodation where the permanent IPAS accommodation centres are at capacity. These premises include hotel and guest house accommodation. We also have quarantine and isolation accommodation, which was accommodation used during the Covid-19 pandemic to facilitate initial isolation of new arrivals to the State as part of the IPAS response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The specific hotels are no longer quarantine centres as there is no longer quarantine for new arrivals. These centres are now being used for pre-reception. Pre-reception accommodation is accommodation put in place to provide initial accommodation to new arrivals where there is no available space in the national reception centre in Balseskin. My Department has contracted NGO support at these locations to assist with meeting the needs of the residents at those locations. Nine such centres are now operating.

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