The first Ukrainian refugees have arrived at Gormanston army camp as a surge in new arrivals triggered the Government’s contingency plan for the use of tented accommodation at the facility.
A coach carrying Ukrainians arrived at the Defence Forces camp in Co Meath from the Government’s transit hub at Citywest in west Dublin shortly after 4pm on Tuesday afternoon.
Minister for Children Roderic O’Gorman has said the camp would accommodate up to 150 refugees initially, with a maximum capacity of 350, with each tent holding up to 16 people.
His department said the Ukrainian refugees would only remain at the camp on a short-term basis until alternative accommodation becomes available, with Mr O’Gorman saying that the maximum period would be a week.
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Media were not permitted into the camp to view the accommodation. The department shared photographs of 40 smaller accommodation tents with large tents comprising a mess hall and a recreation hall. It also provided images of rooms of collected clothes and children’s toys.
The Department of Children said there was no air-conditioning in accommodation tents — only in the mess and recreation tents at the camp — despite temperatures remaining above 20 degrees at the Co Meath camp on Tuesday afternoon amid a record heatwave.
The temporary tented accommodation at Gormanston has been brought into use as the Government’s existing accommodation reached full capacity at one point last week due to an increase in the number of Ukrainian refugees and asylum seekers arriving into the State.
Last week the Government ran out of space for Ukrainian refugees and asylum seekers in State-provided accommodation at the Citywest conference centre in Dublin, forcing more than 300 people to stay in the old terminal building in Dublin Airport for two nights.
The Government plans to open a second welcome centre for refugees — in addition to the Citywest facility — in the coming two to three weeks. The first tranche of accommodation units, providing 500 spaces, will be handed over by the Department of Housing next week.
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The Central Statistics Office has said that more than 43,000 people have arrived from Ukraine since the Russian invasion began on February 24th, including almost 4,500 in the last three weeks.
Mr O’Gorman has defended the State’s response to accommodating people fleeing the Russian invasion, saying the Government has had to deal with a recent surge in the number of arrivals.
“We are in a wartime situation and in a wartime situation you experience surges of refugees arriving and we have experienced a surge over the last six to eight weeks. We link it to the increase in attacks on civilian populations throughout Ukraine,” he told RTÉ on Monday.
Britain’s new policy of deporting refugees to Rwanda is also believed to have contributed to a surge in the number of people applying for international protection in the Republic in recent months.
Government Ministers have privately warned that, based on current trends, there could be a 300 per cent increase in the numbers seeking international protection this year compared with 2019.
