As the number of asylum applications has now exceeded 1,000 a month for the first time, the Department of Justice has issued an "open invitation to anyone" to provide accommodation for asylum-seekers.
The Department placed advertisements in the national, Sunday and provincial newspapers over the past few days urgently seeking accommodation for asylum-seekers. Hotels, guesthouses, B&Bs and owners of letting property throughout the State are invited to provide details of available accommodation.
The move, intended as a response to the accommodation crisis in Dublin, was agreed at a meeting of the Government's inter-departmental committee on asylum-seekers last week.
The refugee applications centre run by the Department in Dublin received its 1,000th asylum-seeker in October last Thursday, more than the total for the whole of 1995. By the end of the year, a record 7,000 applications will have been received, a spokesman forecast last night.
Asylum-seekers are currently being put up in 12 Dublin hotels, at a nightly cost of £40 to £50, because the supply of emergency hostel and B&B accommodation is completely full.
Meanwhile, 700 asylum-seekers have been sent notice of deportation within the past few weeks. The Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, has written asking them to give reasons within 15 days why they should not be deported.
The first of those who have failed to reply will be liable to deportation from this week. Most of the others are likely to face deportation in the new year. No deportations have been carried out since last February, when the High Court ruled that part of the relevant legislation was unconstitutional.
The Eastern Health Board, which is responsible for finding accommodation for asylum-seekers, says it can't cope with the increased numbers using its service in recent months.
More than 85 per cent of asylum applicants are housed in Dublin, where 2,700 asylum-seekers have been put up in emergency accommodation and 6,600 are in private rented accommodation.
Attempts to achieve a greater dispersal of the burden throughout the State have failed up to now, and the Government is now expected to take a harder line to "encourage" local authorities outside Dublin to take a greater share of asylum-seekers.
Health board officials have expressed concern privately about the danger of "ghettos" of immigrants building up in some parts of Dublin if there are no moves to disperse the new arrivals.
The list of accommodation outside Dublin would operate on a voluntary basis, but the alternative could mean "sleeping in the fresh air" in Dublin, a Department spokesman warned last night.
Proposals for the introduction of a voucher system to replace social welfare payments to asylum-seekers would be ready "within weeks". Significant abuse was taking place, he claimed. For Ireland to continue making payments to asylum-seekers when most other countries had switched to direct provision would only provide an incentive to traffickers.
Britain has seen a similar surge in the number of asylum-seekers in recent months. With numbers up 60 per cent on last year, this year's total already exceeds that for the whole of 1998. Around 7,300 applications were received in September, compared to 4,455 in the same period the year before.
The largest numbers came from the former Yugoslavia, Somalia, the former Soviet Union and Sri Lanka.
Meanwhile, the Immigration Control Platform has called on Ireland to opt out of the Geneva Convention on refugees. The group claims the convention "shackles" Ireland and other countries to accepting asylum-seekers once they arrive in the State. Refugees should only be accepted if this is the first state in which they arrive, it says.
pcullen@irish-times.ie