Minister for Children, Equality and Integration Roderic O’Gorman said the situation of asylum seekers sleeping on the floor at Dublin’s Red Cow Moran Hotel was “unacceptable”.
At the weekend, it emerged that a large number of foreign nationals were sleeping on the hotel floor, and photos posted to social media showed makeshift beds in the hotel’s conference rooms.
Responsibility for allocating accommodation to asylum seekers lies with O’Gorman’s department, which confirmed yesterday that it was aware of the situation.
Speaking on Today with Claire Byrne on RTE, O’Gorman said: “It’s not the sort of response as a country we want to be providing to people fleeing here.”
“In the short term, myself and my officials will be engaging with the Irish Refugee Council, with the Jesuit Refugee Service who flagged up their concerns, to see what measures we can take in the short term to improve the situation there.”
“There have been days where we haven’t been able to provide accommodation immediately, and that’s when we’ve had to rely on the centre in the Red Cow.
“We are taking measures to address it, and in the medium term earlier this year we undertook a procurement process to get more accommodation for people seeking international protection that’s completed, and we’ll be commissioning and opening those additional units of accommodation in the weeks to come.”
Meanwhile 10,000 Irish people are left sleeping on the street, park benches, doorways and hotel rooms for years, with the government appearing to not care less.
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