Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thank my colleague, Deputy Whitmore, for her work on the motion and this issue. The desperate situation on Mount Street has been a growing humanitarian crisis for months, with hundreds of men and boys sleeping in the cold in completely unsanitary conditions, which has led to the spread of disease in recent weeks. Local activist groups and volunteers have been working tirelessly to help these men and to provide food, warm clothes and blankets. Where was the Department? Where was the emergency response? Where was the urgency that this crisis required? Why was it only in the past week that a capacity review was undertaken to find the number of vacant beds available for asylum seekers? How can the Minister stand over that, when more than 1,000 people have been sleeping rough in sub-zero temperatures, fending for themselves on the streets of Dublin? The Government should be ashamed of itself.

Right when we think the situation has reached rock bottom and the Department’s treatment of these people could not get any worse, what happens? Ahead of St. Patrick's Day, the hundreds of people on Mount Street are shuffled onto buses to be transported to new accommodation, with no transparency on where they were going or what to expect. This was clearly giving these people the impression and the hope that things were going to get better. The reality of the situation in Crooksling was stark. The best that the Government could apparently provide them with was more tents, isolated in the middle of nowhere, far from the volunteers who supported and protected them, and left with a gang of balaclava-wearing people shouting racist abuse outside the gate.

It should not require much critical thinking from the Government to realise that isolating people from their limited support base will not make them safer. For the Government to defend the conditions in Crooksling by saying that access to health services and transport links to Dublin are to be put in place in the future is laughable. Why on earth was that not done before it bussed hundreds of medically and physically vulnerable people to an isolated area? It is nothing short of negligent. The Minister needs to listen to the people he sent there - to the people who, within a number of hours, were walking 19 km back to Mount Street, back to an area with no sanitation or security. Why? It was because, ultimately, they felt it was safer than the accommodation he had provided.

No one is saying that this is easy or that the war in Ukraine did not put an incredible level of pressure on the international protection system. However, instead of acting on the recommendations of the Catherine Day report after the fact, instead of immediately starting work on six State reception centres and 700 modular homes, the Government’s response has been shambolic, with no sign of medium- or long-term planning. If the Government had followed the recommendations of the report, the sixth reception centre would be delivered this year. Not only are we nowhere near having even one, but the Government is refusing to disclose the location of them until after the local elections. It is playing politics with people's dignity, health and fundamental human rights, and everybody can see it for what it is. It is a complete and utter disgrace.

Not only does the Government seem to be reluctant or incapable of delivering the much-needed reception centres, but it also seems there is available accommodation it is just not using. In a parliamentary question response to me yesterday, the Minister stated there were 3,100 potential vacancies within the accommodation centres contracted for Ukrainians, with 1,300 of them appearing to be usable. It is not good enough that people are left in the cold, being physically and verbally abused while these beds lie empty, and all because the Department does not seem to have bothered to even check capacity until mid-March.

The increase in the number of asylum seekers is often phrased as a “crisis” but that is not helpful. The reality is that there will always be wars and displacement and there will always be people fleeing persecution or seeking a better life. People have a right to seek protection here and we have a legal obligation to provide it. As an economically successful and safe country, Ireland will be a destination for people. Ireland needs to be able to handle this number. What we need is a coherent plan from the Government on this issue, and we need it quickly.

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