Ireland has admitted that it can no longer provide accommodation to all asylum seekers due to a severe shortage of emergency housing and will distribute tents and sleeping bags where needed.
“Despite intensive efforts to source emergency accommodation, the Department (of Integration) is currently not in a position to provide accommodation to all international protection applicants due to the severe shortage,” the department said in a statement Monday.
Tents and sleeping bags will be provided to people where required, added the department, which oversees asylum seeker accommodation.
Asylum seekers forced to sleep rough will have access to drop-in centres during the day, it said.
The announcement comes after the Minister for Integration, Roderic O’Gorman, said asylum seekers could be turned away from shelters “in the coming days” without being accommodated.
Priority will be given to families arriving into the country, he said Sunday.
Over 100,000 refugees and asylum seekers are currently being accommodated in Ireland, including about 74,000 Ukrainians who fled the war there.
“The war in Ukraine and those fleeing from it has had an enormous impact on available accommodation,” said Micheal Martin, Ireland’s deputy premier, after the announcement.
Ireland will meet its legal and international obligation and do all it possibly can to provide accommodation, Martin told reporters in Dublin.
The government was “very concerned” however about the prospect of asylum seekers sleeping in tents and associated health and safety risks, he said.
Martin said that the government “will do everything it possibly can to avoid that.”
As Canadian Affairs recently reported, more than a thousand of Canada’s asylum seekers are being housed by civil organizations like churches and mosques.
