Asylum applicants are being moved from tents at the International Protection Office on Mount Street in Dublin this morning after weeks of controversy around what was described as a “shanty town”.
A statement from the government said “The purpose of the operation is to ensure the safe movement of people seeking international protection from the tents on Mount Street to International Protection Accommodation Service (IPAS)-designated accommodation.”
However it is unclear as to where the 200 men in tents around Mount Street will be moved to, as local upset and anger grows in areas designated for migrant centres such as Newtownmountkennedy.
The occupants of the tents are being currently boarded on busses bound for International Protection Accommodation Service (IPAS)-designated accommodation. I
Breaking A multi-agency operation to remove asylum seekers and their tents is now underway at Dublin's Mount Street.. pic.twitter.com/Hagkx2xAmQ
— Padraig O'Reilly Photographer (@padraig_reilly) May 1, 2024
Yesterday, Taoiseach Simon Harris said that once the ‘shanty town’ around Mount Street was cleared, it would not be allowed to return.
“There’s two aspects to Mount Street,” he said.
“The first needs to be to provide everybody who is in tents – vulnerable people – with access to accommodation and a safer setting as quickly as possible. And I know that my colleague Minister [for Integration Roderic] O’Gorman is working very actively on that.
“The second thing, though, once we clear Mount Street and provide people with a safer setting and access to sanitation, we do need to make sure that the laws of the land are applied and it’s not allowed to happen again.
“Because we don’t live in a country where makeshift shanty towns are allowed just to develop”.
A local residents’ group had called for action saying: “We are appalled at the encampment of asylum seekers established in our neighbourhood, how it has been allowed to develop and the lack of communication and response of the authorities to our concerns.”
It added that it did not accept “that an encampment of tents around our neighbourhood is acceptable or even legal”.