Dublin

Managed emergency centre needed for asylum seekers as conditions worsen, doctor says

International Protection applicants facing ‘unmanaged, uncontrolled and inhumane’ situation on arrival

Scenes outside the International Protection Office on Mount Street Lower in Dublin where large numbers of asylum seekers continue to erect tents and camp out. Photo: Bryan O’Brien

Vivienne Clarke
Thu Mar 14 2024 - 14:35

A managed emergency centre for arriving international protection applicants could provide safe and secure services, a doctor who works with refugees has said.

Up to 200 men were sleeping in a makeshift camp near the International Protection Office in central Dublin earlier this week, with growing concern about waste and unhygienic living conditions.

The current conditions for arrivals in tents on Mount Street were “unmanaged, uncontrolled and inhumane”, Dr Angela Skuse told RTÉ radio’s Today with Claire Byrne show. She is the medical director of Safety Net Primary Care, which provides services for asylum seekers.

People with kidney and heart disease had been staying in tents and had to be moved to hospital, she added.

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“As a country, we need to provide a managed emergency shelter for them. So, although I think the healthcare response has been really good ... there’s just a limit to what you can do in the current unmanaged environment. So we think that what we need to provide as a country is a managed emergency shelter with sanitation, on-site security, on a State site, to keep people safe, and staff on site so that they can identify and respond to problems as they emerge.”

Since December 4th, when the International Protection Accommodation Services (IPAS) said it could no longer provide accommodation to male asylum seekers, numbers sleeping rough around the offices of the International Protection Office (IPO) have increased steadily.

On Tuesday, The Irish Times counted 133 tents, provided by Volunteers and charitable donations, pitched along the pavement on Mount Street Lower around and behind the IPO on Grattan Court and Grattan Street. Many appeared to accommodate two men each. In a number of areas tents were clustered together in mini-camps. One area has been designated for rubbish where piles of sodden clothes, blankets, empty food cartons, bottles, cans, and reportedly human faeces and urine, are piled four feet high and ten feet long.

Dr Skuse said that it been a tense number of weeks as the situation for the people in tents was getting “increasingly concerning”. It was “just not possible” to keep people safe and to provide adequate care in circumstances that were “so unmanaged.”

“There are no on-site hygiene facilities, there’s no toilet that they can access at night and there are no washing facilities. And the situation actually is quite inhumane. And although we are doing the best that we can. It’s not something that we want to see continue,” she said.

“Where they’ve come from, the journey that they’ve made to get here and then for them to arrive and not be made welcome and to be left in very exposed circumstances is not safe,” she said.

“We’ve seen people with kidney disease, heart disease, back pain, diabetes, but because of their circumstances, because they perhaps haven’t had access to healthcare for a long time, and because they’re now living in circumstances where they’re cold and wet and stressed a lot of the time, a lot of the conditions are more advanced and more severe than we would normally see.”

Dr Skuse pointed out that Safety Net was providing outreach services “most days” and referred people with serious problems to emergency departments. “But we have seen other people with severe chronic disease that’s not as acute who have not needed to go to the emergency department, who are living in those tents.” It could take “a week or two” before they receive treatment.

The chief executive of homeless service Mendicity, Louisa Santoro, has described the “significant deterioration” in recent weeks of conditions for international protection applicants who are living in tents off Mount Street.

The situation “certainly won’t be getting any better. And as the weeks go on, unless we have to have a much more urgent response,” she told RTÉ radio’s News at One.

Not all of the people who were accessing services from Mendicity were international protection applicants, she said.

People were going to Mount Street because they felt there was safety in numbers. “So they’re going there purely for the sense of safety and probably better accesses or pathways to services.”

Ms Santoro said she did not understand why there appeared to be different categories of homelessness. The people in tents on Mount Street could not be defined as anything other than homeless, but they could not access homeless services.

“I can’t understand if we have an existing infrastructure that is paid for through public funding and public money, that that is not being utilised to its fullest effect, particularly as the situation deteriorates near Mount Street,” she said.

There was an outreach service that was resourced and was extremely experienced and in their own stated mandate, she said. “They say they engage with adults who are sleeping rough and support them in short term homeless accommodation. That’s clearly not happening on Mount Street.”

Labour Party councillor Dermot Lacey told the same programme that it was unacceptable that people were living in tents when there were buildings such as Baggot Street hospital and vacant office blocks that could be utilised. Any moves to do that would be supposed by the council, he said. The problem was the different agencies involved, there needed to be a co-ordinated approach.

Vivienne Clarke

Vivienne Clarke is a reporter

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