Some 46 male asylum seekers in Kerry are this week being removed from their direct provision accommodation centre to make way for parents with children.
The Irish Refugee Council has expressed concern about the speed of the arrangements and the disruption it has caused to residents, many of whom have been there some time.
The council has called for the asylum seekers to be located as close as possible to their Killarney centre. It is understood however, the asylum seekers from Africa and Eastern Europe are being dispersed from Park Lodge, near the town to other parts of the country.
"This sort of thing happens all too regularly," Mr Peter O'Mahony, chief executive of the Irish Refugee Council said. The council acknowledged the need to re-accommodate asylum-seekers as accommodation needs change.
"In practice, uprooting people from one town and re-settling them miles away can often be quite distressing and severely impedes integration," he said.
Their accommodation centre in Ireland may be the first stable base that some asylum seekers have had, since being forced to flee their home perhaps a couple of years earlier, Mr O'Mahony added.
Almost half of all asylum seekers (some 42 per cent) will have been in their centres for periods between nine months and two years while their applications and appeals for refugee status are being decided. Many will have begun to put down roots, however shallow, attempting to integrate into local society, some doing voluntary work, some will have begun to do English language classes in the local community.
For some, who have no immediate family members with them, the only friends they are now in contact with are those they have got to know since coming to Ireland. "In the light of all this every reasonable effort should be made to minimise the disruption. Where at all possible people who have to be transferred should be moved the shortest journey possible," he said.
Under the terms of direct provision asylum seekers were not allowed to work and received just over €19 in pocket-money each week. Kerry with 0.5 per cent of its population asylum seekers, has one of the highest percentages in the state. Most of the asylum seekers there in direct provision are in seven family centres.