Figures released to Rural Independent TD for Laois/Offaly, Carol Nolan, illustrate the massive and escalating costs entailed in providing accommodation for people other than Ukrainian refugees who have applied for asylum in Ireland.
The total will increase by at least €500 million in 2023 and does not include Ukrainian refugees
The total cost for people in IPAS accommodation between the start of 2016 and 2022 was €1,069,519. The average cost of providing the accommodation increased to more than €26,000 per resident in 2021, before falling to €18,568 last year.
With 25,510 people being accommodated by IPAS up to the end of last week, current costs for 2023 alone, assuming that the average costs remain the same, will amount to more than €474 million.
In fact, with the increasing numbers arriving, the total expenditure for the year for non-Ukrainian asylum seekers is likely to well surpass €500 million.
In a separate question, Deputy Nolan asked what have been the “total costs arising from refugees from Ukraine in 2022, including accommodation, assistance payments, health benefits, additional staffing and administration costs.”
In response, she was informed that the overall cost of providing for Ukrainian refugees here in 2022 by the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (DCEDIY) alone had come to €522 million.
That figure too will be substantially higher in 2023 so a modest estimate of the costs involved in this as well as the direct accommodation costs of those seeking asylum from other countries will come to well over one billion Euros in 2023.
By way of comparison the total cost of living package announced by the Government this time last year was around €2.2 billion.
The provision of accommodation and other services has become a vast cash cow for businesses, with some of the major beneficiaries being companies who are based abroad. The collateral costs include the diversion of what ought to be tourist and other accommodation to this lucrative and low cost new sector of the economy. With all the negative consequences which that has brought, both in economic and social terms particularly in rural communities.
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Outrageous and scandalous.
Correction. The taxpayer has spent….
And once they get status, tgey go back to where they came from.
The media reported that €4 billion would be spent from the Budget mostly to house Ukrainian refugees.
There is no end to the untruths told to keep this refugee racket going. A Labour party candidate for the next local elections, Bernie Linnane overdid her welcome in ‘a North Leitrim village set to welcome 155 refugees’. They are described by the Department as International Protection Applicants. That means they are here for the benefits Ireland offers them, the highest in the EU. But Ms Linnane, in her welcome, has a delusion of heavily bombed war zones as their places of origin – ‘We see nightly on our TVs the effects of war and the effects of fear on people. We are very lucky that there are no bombs dropping on us, that people in other parts of the world are living with on a daily basis. So when people come to our country looking for help, we should make an effort to welcome them’, she commands us. They will not even be here for a few more weeks. Tellingly, they will have votes in the local elections.
When 2 Independent TDs tried to reveal to the Dáil the views of the communities they represent, they met with hostility from all the usual quarters, a few years ago. Deputy Michael Collins said Irish people who are ‘hungry on the street’ should be prioritised over immigrants. Deputy Noel Grealish said African migrants ‘sponge off the system’. Labour TD Brendan Howlin said these remarks were ‘very dangerous’. They were healthy outspoken comments that should have got debate going, but Howlin invented ‘very dangerous’ to create alarm. Efforts at debate on this burning issue are stamped down as dangerous but propaganda, untruths and delusions are spun in its place. This is not democracy.