Last night around 100 residents of Stradbally Co Laois held a meeting on the housing of hundreds of Ukrainian refugees in tents on the Stradbally Hall estate, reports RTE.
Yesterday, a group of 25 women and children first reached the tent.
Estate owner Thomas Cosby attended the meeting.
One of the organisers of last night’s meeting, Louise Buggy, said it was held in response to issues raised by residents, including concerns about the number of people to be included – up to 750 people, lack of consultation on the project, short deadlines are given and no information is available.
“It was announced on the Friday of the (Electric) Picnic when nobody had a chance to respond and everything was rushed,” Ms Buggy said, reports RTE.
She said that while the “community welcomes all refugees that are seeking sanctuary”… “the camp holds a capacity the equivalent of half the population of the parish, so that’s a substantial amount of people… it’s a small village, there is one local guard, our fire station is already under-resourced… there are concerns that I think need to be addressed,” reports RTE.
The contract runs for six weeks, but Ms Buggy said there were also concerns about what would happen after the six weeks.
“After the six weeks were up, if those people weren’t housed then where would they go, are they going to be left out on the streets, there are no guarantees of housing, we are in a housing crisis,” Ms Buggy said, reports RTE.
It is known that there is a frank exchange of views in the meeting, which is sometimes stormy.
Mr Cosby acknowledged that “community engagement fell off the bottom of the list”.
“We’ve been concentrating on getting this built,” he said, reports RTE.
“People are angry that they haven’t been consulted… yes there is a certain amount of fear of obviously a lot of people coming into a community. Luckily after the meeting things are much more transparent, people are much more willing to help. It’s a very short-term thing, this is an emergency situation, and we’ve responded to it,” Mr Cosby said, reports RTE.
Tell us your thoughts in the Facebook post and share this with your friends.
