On Monday, elected members of Kilkenny County Council were informed that a premises on Main Street, Urlingford is to be opened this month to provide emergency accommodation for Ukrainian refugees who have been granted Temporary Protection.
Independent Councillor Maurice Shortall, who represents the Castlercomer electoral ward that includes Urlingford, told Gript that he had been sent an email from the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (DCEDIY) late on Monday evening informing him and other councillors of plans to open the former Josephine’s Road House to accommodate the refugees. 48 beds are to be provided and the contract is set to last for two years.
The premises referred to in the note from the Department will be well known over the years to bus travellers and motorists as a café at the bus stop in the town.
Fatima Gunning reported on a protest in the town early last year when a similar proposal had been made, and the owners told local KCLR radio that they were intending to accommodate Ukrainian refugees in the premises once renovated. There had been concerns that the site would be used as an IPAS centre for International Protection applicants.
The original plan was not proceeded with, and local people are now wondering whether a new proposal might contradict a Department announcement last October that they are “no longer procuring commercial accommodation, and offers of extra beds in existing properties, or offers of new properties cannot be accepted.”
Councillor Shortall told Gript that there has been no discussion of the proposal at Council level since he was elected and that he believes that the planning and other arrangements were already “wrapped up” and perhaps cover the use of previously vacant premises.
That means that the site might not strictly be considered to be a commercial premises. It is also not a new offer. Whether the undertaking by the Department regarding the contracting of commercial premises counts for anything is another matter. The state remains under huge pressure to accommodate the large numbers of Ukrainians here who show no signs that they will be going home any time soon, as well as presumably people who continue to arrive from Ukraine to benefit from the higher payments available to them in Ireland.
Besides that there continue to be hundreds of people arriving every week to claim International Protection – all of which makes the Department’s plans to move away from private contractors pretty questionable. Indeed, the latest figures for asylum accommodation payments show a number of new commercial entrants and there continue to be new applications made for local planning exemptions.
It may be of course that contrary to some media claims in January 2024 that there was already an agreement to use the Urlingford premises, so that this does not require a new offer. The owners of the former restaurant premises and the adjacent garage are Beremtom which is jointly owned by Bernard, Emmet and Tom Kavanagh.
They appear to have leased the management of the premises to Keenan Property and local people have been quick to remind Bernard Kavanagh that he assured people during an interview with KCLR that he would never lease the building for that purpose.
In an interview which Bernard Kavanagh gave to KCLR on January 9, 2024, he told the presenter Brian Redmond that some of the people he was planning to accommodate were already working for him. Such is the bizarre stage at which we as a society have reached that this passed unremarked.
In that interview, Kavanagh stated that he had turned down previous offers from persons seeking to lease the vacant premises because they wished to retain control over what use the building was put to. He had also said that the family had decided not to seek a contract to accommodate International Protection refugees themselves.
They did, however, decide to apply for a contract to take in Ukrainians. Kavanagh said that if the whole thing went as planned that they would later “close the loop” and use the building to house their own employees from overseas. At that stage they decided not to go ahead but a year later everything seems set to proceed as was initially planned.
While much was made last year about “misinformation” regarding the Urlingford centre, the manner in which such centres are announced and fact that even elected Councillors are only informed when they are a fait accompli underlines why communities around the state are so concerned.
As Councillor Shortall told me, while most people are “generally happy when women and children are housed” that concern remains. He said that while immigration was a major issue during the elections last year that it didn’t fully “translate into the ballot boxes.” Nonetheless, “The failure from central government for failing to get a handle on uncontrolled immigration will creep into many communities over Ireland.”
It would certainly seem that now that the elections are done with and that a new government appears to be in place that there will be no let up in the push by the state to place new accommodation centres into local communities with the same lack of consultation and preparation that has marked this runaway train since the ending of the Covid panic when numbers began to expand hugely.