Now 80 tents pitched at Dublin’s Grand Canal as Labour’s Ivana Bacik says Government needs to ‘step up’ to provide accommodation

Labour Leader Ivana Bacik has asked that all government departments engage with each other to find accommodation for asylum seekers as the number of tents pitched at the Grand Canal in Dublin reached 80 today.

Speaking on the canal bank at Mount Street Bridge, close to where an encampment of around 200 tents was dismantled last week, she said the problem of such camps will continue until all Government departments with access to land and property engage with the Department of Integration.

“We’ve called consistently for months now for a greater sense of central coordination on this. We don’t see the other government departments that do have access to vacant properties, like Department of Health, like Department of Defence, we don’t see those departments stepping up to provide accommodation, or provide lists of sites to the Department of Integration,” she said.

“And that’s what we need to see, and indeed we need to see the Government take up the recommendations of Catherine Day’s expert report to provide a number, I think she said five or six, large reception centres around the country, which would have capacity for numbers of people who come here seeking refuge. That’s the sort of centrally planned approach that is needed now,” she added.

Dr Day, former Secretary General of the European Commission, chaired the Advisory Group on the Provision of Support including Accommodation to Persons in the International Protection Process

It recommended that the State must stop depending on the private sector and establish new reception and integration centres, a specialised accommodation agency and better, earlier dialogue with local communities.

Deputy Bacik said she welcomed the Government’s move last week to provide the accommodation that was made available to those who were sleeping in tents on Mount Street, but added that she was “deeply disappointed” to see that there was no longer-term plan in place.

“Both Councillor Dermot Lacey and I have been calling for Government to put into use local vacant sites that are State owned, like Baggot Street Hospital which is only a stone’s throw from here, and which could and should be repurposed for accommodation,” she told the Irish Independent.

“We need to see a coherent longer-term plan, and we need to see greater central coordination so that it’s not just Minister O’Gorman’s department left shouldering the responsibility,” she added.

Deputy Bacik said the problem of encampments will continue “unless we see Government taking this problem, as Dermot Lacey said ‘by the scruff of the neck’.”

Ms Bacik also commended local residents and volunteers who have provided “support in such a compassionate way to the individuals who are forced to sleep rough by the side of the canal and sleeping on public streets.

“Clearly this is an inhumane and unsustainable situation. I am calling on Government again to move urgently this week to address the situation to provide alternative accommodation, as is our duty to those who come here seeking refuge,” said Ms Bacik.

Asked if she thought that some people may feel that the visual imagery of the tents lined up along the canal might stop people coming to Ireland in the first place, Deputy Bacik said: “Some of us in opposition have concerns about that, that this is in fact almost a deliberate ploy by Government to make the situation appear so bad in international media that it acts to dissuade those coming here.

“We think that’s inhumane if that is the case, and indeed I would hesitate to say it is because it first of all, it’s inhumane. Secondly, there are all sorts of factors that bring people on the desperate journeys that we’ve seen, seeking refuge and seeking shelter in safe countries.

“I don’t think there’s any reality to the idea that this sort of imagery would dissuade those who are desperate to escape war or persecution and to whom we have a duty under international law,” she added.

“I’ve met many people now, we have welcomed groups in the area, and the sorts of situations they’re fleeing from are appalling. We’ve met Palestinians who fled from Gaza. We’ve met people who’ve fled from wars in Somalia, and Sudan. That’s the sort of situation that people come here to escape,” Deputy Bacik explained.

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