The Government has said emergency accommodation for most of the 500 asylum seekers who are currently without a place to live – some of whom are living in tents in Dublin city centre – will be provided in the coming days.
Senior political sources said there was a heightened awareness in Government of the need to ensure the safety of asylum seekers for whom the State has been unable to provide accommodation but they played down reports that gardaí are preparing for a wave of anti-immigrant demonstrations in the wake of Friday’s incidents.
The Department of Integration said that “in the next week or two” three accommodation centres in Dublin and one outside Dublin are due to be ready to receive new residents. It is hoped that these will be able to take many of the people living in tents, though more applicants for international protection continue to arrive every week.
Separately, accommodating Ukrainian refugees and other migrants has become a lucrative business for some hotel chains, according to figures sourced by The Irish Times. Almost a dozen companies were paid more than €10 million by the State last year, with one hotel group paid more than €80 million for housing migrants.
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Tifco, the second largest hotel operator in the country, which also owns the TraveLodge hotel chain, was paid at least €80 million in deals to accommodate asylum seekers and refugees last year.
The Irish Times analysed logs of more than 3,500 payments made by the Department of Integration last year, to identify the highest-paid providers of accommodation for asylum seekers and Ukrainian refugees.
The Government has been under major pressure to accommodate more than 60,000 Ukrainian refugees who fled to the Republic since the Russian invasion of Ukraine last February, as well as 20,000 asylum seekers from other countries.
The surge in the numbers of refugees and asylum seekers have put huge strain on the State’s ability to accommodate those seeking shelter, with hotels and tourist accommodation heavily relied upon to meet the demand.
[How accommodating refugees has become a lucrative business for hotels]
Figures show Tifco Ltd, the Irish hotel business owned by US private-equity group Apollo, was paid at least €37 million by the department to lease rooms in its hotels. The department separately paid €25.8 million to accommodate asylum seekers and Ukrainians in TraveLodge hotels.
The group received a further €20.5 million under a contract where it provided its new 393-bed TraveLodge hotel on Townsend Street, Dublin city, to the State to exclusively use as accommodation for asylum seekers.
The second highest paid company, Tetrarch Capital, received at least €34 million to accommodate asylum seekers and Ukrainians, according to department figures.
The payments were made to Tetrarch’s company, Cape Wrath Hotel UC, which owns the 764-bed Citywest Hotel and connected convention centre in southwest Dublin, that which the department runs as a transit hub for asylum seekers arriving in the country.
Meanwhile, there is growing unease within An Garda Síochána around the policing of anti-immigration protests, with members of the force unhappy a more proactive approach is not being taken. Several Garda sources told The Irish Times a level of disorder, meeting the threshold of criminality, had been in evidence at many protests for months and they were concerned the response was not more firm.
Last week, a small group of homeless foreign nationals were forced to leave a makeshift camp they had been living in, in tents, in a laneway off Upper Sandwith St, Dublin 2. On Friday night, a line of gardaí stood between anti immigration protesters and an opposing group who had gathered in support of the refugees. Some time after the two-hour stand-off had ended, emergency services were alerted to a fire at the site.
Gardaí are fearful last Friday’s incident may result in copycat targeting of homeless asylum seekers living in tents. Some, however, pointed out the size and frequency of anti immigration protests had been reducing for months and had never gained significant traction.
Sources said the main objective of last Friday night’s operation was safeguarding the foreign nationals who had been living in tents at the location and keeping the rival groups apart, both of which were achieved. Other sources pointed out while a man had been arrested on suspicion of a public order offence, no criminal investigation had been establish immediately to conduct a follow-up inquiry into the scenes witnessed.
Garda Headquarters said on Sunday night that “an investigation will take place in relation to the criminal damage incident”. That criminal damage involved “wooden materials and pallets” being set alight in the lane off Sandwith Street. “No one was present in the laneway at the time and no one was injured,” the Garda reply added.
