The Government may consider lengthening the time after which vacant student accommodation or former nursing homes could be made available to house refugees and asylum seekers.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said there was a risk that these accommodation providers could decide to bring the nursing home or student accommodation out of service “in the hope that they can do better financially” and that this could alienate communities.
Earlier this year the Government lifted a restriction which had blocked nursing homes from being repurposed for refugee accommodation.
Under the revised rules the properties now face a two-year wait before they can be used for international protection applicants or people fleeing the war in Ukraine.
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Furthermore, student accommodation must have been vacant for a year before it is converted for use for housing refugees and asylum seekers, under a new protocol agreed earlier this year by the Government.
Asked if he would consider loosening those rules, Mr Varadkar said “we’re not proposing to change that. 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 international protection accommodation. We just need to be wise to that risk. And this isn’t a one size fits all, some nursing homes are just out of date – they’re not up to standard and some student accommodation is substandard and what you’ll see sometimes is that a new nursing home gets built and the old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.”
He said in terms of accommodating asylum seekers the Government would have to examine a range of options but that the Coalition wants to be careful about repurposing student accommodation and nursing homes.
“I’m not saying that should never be done. But I think if communities feel that they’re 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 cognisant of all that.”
Separately Mr Varadkar described the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, as a “sewer”.
“Twitter, as it used to be called, has always been a bit of a sewer as far as social media goes. Despite what other people may say I am actually somebody who believes in free speech but there have to be limitations and standards.”
“I don’t believe that Twitter, or X, implements its own community standards. Other social media platforms do, and I think if you’re not even able to live up to your own standards it doesn’t reflect very well on any organisation.
“The Government does have a role to play.
“We said very clearly a year or two ago that the era of self-regulation was over. We have laws and they’re European laws. We have an online safety commissioner now and we have Coimisiún na Meán, and I think things are going to change.”
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