Almost €1 billion was paid to commercial operators to provide accommodation services to asylum seekers last year, the Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration has disclosed.
The bill for private accommodation for an estimated 33,000 people seeking international protection in Ireland last year was €978 million, Oonagh McPhillips, secretary general of the department, has stated in a letter to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC).
Responding to a series of queries from the Oireachtas spending watchdog about the costs of accommodation, Ms McPhillips said the average cost was €82 per person per night, although that figure varied from region to region.
The two counties with the highest average nightly costs were Kildare and Carlow where the figure was over €90 per person per night. In contrast, the average cost per person per night in Westmeath was €55, and it was €59 in both Tipperary and Cavan. The figure for Dublin was €78 per person per night, and €72 per person per night in Cork.
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Ms McPhillips said it was not directly comparable to the rental market. “The department contracts for accommodation services, which include the use of the building in question, and pays a ‘per person per night’ rate to the contractor to deliver the services. Therefore it is not comparable to the rental market,” she said.
She also pointed out that the services contracted were not exclusively for rent, nor solely for bed and board.
Other services included food, commercial insurance, security services, basic hygiene products, laundry services and, in some cases, transport.
Ms McPhillips said centres were obliged to provide either three meals per day plus snacks or, alternatively, provide self-catering facilities and a weekly grocery allowance (based on family size) that would allow residents to shop and cook for themselves.
“This is included in the accommodation rate in IP contracts,” she said.
If the International Protection Accommodation Service facility is more than 2km from a large town, a transport service must be provided free of charge to residents. Laundry facilities are also free of charge and there must be 24-hour security provided by the operators.
In other correspondence to the PAC, An Garda Síochána has disclosed that fewer than half of the 89 gardaí assigned to Irish-speaking Gaeltacht districts have the ability to work in the Irish language.
Two of the three largest Gaeltachts, Connemara and Kerry, have sizeable numbers of fluent Irish speakers. All 18 gardaí assigned to Connemara and the Aran Islands are proficient in Irish. Similarly in the Corca Dhuibhne Gaeltacht of Kerry, eight of the 11 gardaí in Dingle/Daingean Uí Chúise have Irish-language proficiency, as has the single garda assigned to Baile an Fheirtéaraigh.
The situation is less positive in Donegal. Only five of the 26 gardaí assigned to the Gaeltacht areas extending from Gweedore to Falcarragh to Carraig have proficiency in Irish. In Mayo, only one of the 20 gardaí in Belmullet has sufficient working proficiency in Irish, according to the figures. In the outlying regions of Gob an Choire and Gleann na Muaidhe, four of the six gardaí can conduct business through Irish.
The smaller Gaeltachts of Baile Bhúirne and Béal Átha an Ghaorthaidh in Cork, and Rinn in Waterford, have full complements of Irish-speaking gardaí.
Fianna Fáil TD Pat the Cope Gallagher, whose base is the Donegal Gaeltacht, said his priority was to get more guards into rural stations in his constituency and in the Gaeltacht.
“Those guards should have fluency in Irish. I see that the percentage in Donegal is much less than in west Galway and in west Kerry. I would hope that, through time, this would be rectified,” he said.
