Varadkar: Time lag to turn nursing homes into refugee housing may be extended
Pre A (pa) Varadkar Leo Briefing Taoiseach Christmas Media Gave
The Taoiseach has downplayed the prospect of fast-tracking the process for repurposing nursing homes and student accommodation to house refugees and asylum seekers.
Leo Varadkar said the cooling-off period between a property becoming vacant and it being reused by the Department of Integration is more likely to be extended, rather than reduced.
Certain buildings like nursing homes or student accommodation must be out of use for periods of a year to two years before being changed for use as migrant accommodation centres and while the Irish Red Cross has urged the Government to revise this down, Leo Varadkar told journalists at a briefing this week that it was most likely to go the other direction.
This, Mr Varadkar said, was due to fears that needed facilities would be taken out of use because it was financially more lucrative to get State contracts to house refugees.
"We're not proposing to change that. I think it's one year student accommodation at the moment and two years for nursing homes," Mr Varadkar said.
"If anything we might make that longer because there is a concern that some student accommodation providers and some nursing providers might choose to bring the nursing home or student accommodation out of service in the hope that they can do better financially, by then making it available in a year or two for refugee or IP accommodation.
"We just need to be wise to that risk. And this isn't a one-size-fits-all all, what can work. Some nursing homes are just out of date; they're not up to standard and some student accommodation is substandard and what you'll see sometimes is that a new nursing home gets built and the old nursing home can then be repurposed for accommodation, so that's okay."
With some international protection applicants being forced to sleep rough, Mr Varadkar said things like shipping containers have not yet been examined for use as homes. He said that taking nursing homes out of use could have a detrimental impact on communities.
"Well, as you know, at the moment we're accommodating some Ukrainian refugees and some international protection applicants in tents," he said.
"That's not a situation that we want to be in. So, you know, of course, we have to consider any option that's available to us when it comes to providing accommodation but I think we need to be careful about repurposing student accommodation and nursing homes, for example, to accommodate refugees or IP applicants, and I'm not saying that should never be done.
"But I think if communities feel that they're, you know, losing their nursing home or losing their student accommodation to international protection or to refugees, that doesn't help us to make the case in favour of treating refugees well and accepting new people into your area so we just have to be cognizant of all that."
In Co Galway last weekend, a former hotel earmarked to house 70 IP applicants was set alight in a suspected arson attack. That followed a blockade and protest by locals unhappy by the decision to use the hotel as asylum seeker accommodation.
There have been similar incidents at other properties proposed for repurposing during 2023.