The Ministry of Integration has confirmed that a €50 weekly voucher for homeless asylum seekers has been introduced just weeks after it was claimed to already exist.
On May 5, the ministry said that new applicants for international protection who have not been offered accommodation by the state are being issued “with weekly €50 vouchers”, reports RTE.
However, a number of asylum seekers who had no state accommodation and slept outside told RTÉ News that they had not received such vouchers and had not heard of them.
When RTÉ asked the ministry about this, a spokesman on May 16 replied that the International Protection Accommodation Service (IPAS) had been “issuing the weekly voucher to international protection applicants for a number of weeks now,” reports RTE.
However, the ministry has since confirmed to RTÉ that “this additional support to international protection applicants commenced on 23 May 2023,” reports RTE.
A spokesman said these vouchers would actually be issued as €100 vouchers every two weeks and that the issuance would be electronic.
Nick Henderson, chief executive of the Irish Refugee Council, said it was “still unclear if everyone will be able to access this voucher”.
“With a €50 voucher, people can eat out and maybe buy some clothes for a day or two. However, in our opinion and our experience of working with homeless people, this will not prevent despair and will never replace the reality that “someone has to sleep outside,” Nick Henderson, Chief Executive of the Irish Refugee Council said, reports RTE.
This support is in addition to a €50 single-use voucher card issued to asylum seekers who were not offered state-provided accommodation on first entry, and a weekly €38.80 subsidy normally given to people living in state-provided accommodation. directly.
When the state stopped accommodation for adults without children on January 24 due to a nationwide shortage, the one-time voucher was initially worth €20.
The weekly subsidy of €38.80 was also initially unavailable to those who were left without accommodation, but this changed after about two months and applied retrospectively to those who applied earlier.
Figures released this evening by the ministry show that 119 people who applied for international protection were not offered state-provided accommodation, including 21 who applied today and 40 who applied yesterday after the bank holiday weekend, reports RTE.
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