Asylum Seekers live in these privately run Accommodation Centres whilst their case is being assessed. They were originally meant for short stays when started in 2001, but are now used for much longer one’s and the median stay is 27 months. Around 7,000 people are currently housed like this.
Those housed there have little privacy, no cooking facilities, and they are excluded from any community life. Nearly 2,000 are sharing bedrooms with people they are not related to. Guardians who manage it appear to have oversight of children from families in there, which causes a lot of problems for the future as well as present.
In the last general election in Ireland the Green Party had a commitment in their manifesto to replace these centres with a completely different way of housing, and this has been taken on board by the Irish Government, and now has all party support. This is due to be completed by 2024. It won’t be run by private companies but our equivalent of Social Housing providers, with welfare at their heart.
Three lessons from this.