On September 25, I wrote about an IPAS centre at Setanta House in the Louth town of Ardee. It appeared that it was one of those many accommodation centres that have been in operation for years – five years in the case of Setanta House – before any application was made or exemption confirmed.
I say many because, as the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General has shown following an examination of 20 centres, only 4 of that sample had planning permission or a documented exemption with the local authority as required.
If this is a representative sample then it would confirm my own and others findings that even the lax governance of the asylum accommodation sector is being bypassed in many cases.
As my last piece proved, asylum applicants have been accommodated at Setanta House since 2019. Yet the first official contact that the contractor Brimwood, which is the largest of the accommodation companies in the Seamus ‘Banty’ McEnaney portfolio, had with the planning authority was in October 2024.
Louth County Council issued a decision on November 22, 2024, to grant an exemption. A person from Ardee who was aware of the fact that Setanta House had already been used by IPAS sent a Freedom of Information request to the Council asking for “Planning or zoning-related records from the Department’s perspective, including any references to exemptions, Section 5 notifications, or concerns related to compliance”.
The request was only partly granted but it was clear from the response, and from my own research, that there had been no applications, permissions or exemptions registered with the Council for the purposes of providing IPAS accommodation.
The person who had submitted the original FOI request followed up with another sent on September 30 which asked Louth County Council to make available “Any correspondence or documents relating to the operation of Setanta House prior to November 2024, specifically in relation to its legal or planning status as asylum accommodation.”
And for “Any correspondence between the Department of Justice / IPAS and Louth County Council concerning planning exemptions, Section 5 determinations, or related issues for Setanta House from 2018 to present”.
Another response from the Council dated yesterday, October 9, agreed to “part grant” the request. One part is the same document that they previously made available which is the application from Hughes Planners on behalf of Brimwood dated October 30, 2024.
The other part of the request is summarised by the Council to “Any correspondence or documents relating to the operation of Setanta House prior to November 2024, specifically in relation to its legal or planning status as asylum accommodation.” Which eludes the specific reference to correspondence between the Council and the Department of Justice or IPAS.
That is a crucial part of any application for change of use to asylum accommodation as the local authority always requires that the applicant has documentary proof that they have a contract or are in the process of securing a contract from the Department of Integration which is now under the umbrella of the Department of Justice.
Semantics aside, that request for the relevant correspondence was “refused” on the basis that “the record does not exist.”
Which underlines the fact that not only was there no planning exemption on record to allow the use of Setanta House as an IPAS accommodation centre – and that the Council has no planning exemptions on record.
If there was any contract between Banty’s Brimwood and the Department which had responsibility for IPAS before October 30, 2024, then none of that was made available to Louth County Council planners, as ought to have been the case.
Casting our mind back to the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General, on Wednesday Jim O’Callaghan told Carol Nolan TD that all of the companies found to have failed to produce proper authorisation to the C&PG examiners “have subsequently provided either evidence of ownership, or evidence of authority to offer the property to the Department, such as a lease agreement.”
Another case of closing the barn door after the taxpayer multi billion funded asylum horse has bolted. And we are still no wiser as to any of the issues highlighted by the report. And no wiser regarding how Banty was able to run an IPAS centre for five years without any record of official approval.
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