Newly-arrived asylum-seekers will be sent to Cork after Easter because of the pressure on accommodation in Dublin, the Department of Justice has said.
Cork landlords and property developers are making available 500 rented houses and apartments for use by asylum-seekers, and Cork Corporation, the Southern Health Board and the Departments of Health and Environment have offered other services.
The Eastern Health Board has been experiencing severe difficulties in finding accommodation for asylum-seekers, who are arriving at the rate of 230-250 per month. The Government is also concerned that too many refugees and asylum-seekers are concentrated in certain parts of Dublin, such as west Dublin and the north inner city. About 90 per cent of refugees are in the Dublin area.
A Department of Justice spokesman stressed yesterday that there was no question of sending anyone to Cork involuntarily. However, asylum-seekers will be processed at the Department's "one-stop shop" in Dublin on arrival, and given train or bus tickets for Cork, plus maps to find their accommodation.
The spokesman said they were trying to arrange with local agencies to have them met at Cork station, although some of the accommodation is close to it.
However, he said, the programme would be implemented flexibly, and any new arrivals with family members in Dublin would be allowed to stay in the capital.
Further accommodation for asylum-seekers is likely to become available in Cork, where there is less pressure on housing.
The spokesman said they hoped to involve other cities and urban areas in this "overall strategy of integration" later in the year. If a landlord in Limerick, Galway, Kilkenny or another urban area with the range of necessary services were to offer accommodation, it could be accepted subject to the required health and welfare provisions being in place.
He gave the example of the 47 Romanian gypsies who were taken to Castleblayney, Co Monaghan, last year after a local private leisure centre offered them accommodation. All but 12 of these have now been granted refugee status.
The spokesman said that last autumn the nearly 7,000 asylum-seekers in the State had been invited to come to the Department to have their old identity cards replaced by new cards incorporating security elements.
About 4,800 had come forward, and 600 people who had "previously disappeared from the system" also turned up. The asylum applications of about 400 of the 600 have since been deemed "abandoned", and the Department is still checking on the whereabouts of about another 1,000. The spokesman also said that, contrary to a previous report, the Minister had granted humanitarian leave to remain in the State to 29 asylum-seekers whose applications for refugee status had been refused in 1998 and January and February, 1999.
The chairman of the Irish Refugee Council, Mr Derek Stewart, said many Dublin-based asylum-seekers were finding it difficult to get legal and interpretation and translation services. Unless such services were in place in Cork, new asylum-seekers would face far more severe problems there.