First 150 Kosovan refugees to arrive on Monday

An emergency team of doctors, nurses and counsellors is being assembled by the Southern Health Board in preparation for the arrival of the first 150 Kosovo refugees in Ireland on Monday.

The group will be housed at two centres, Atlas House Hostel in Killarney, Co Kerry, and Drishane Castle near Millstreet, Co Cork. The former is normally used by back-backers and tourists in the south-west, while the latter is part of Mr Noel C. Duggan's showjumping complex.

Food and medical care will be provided to the refugees as well as educational services. The Refugee Agency is recruiting translators and has already identified some among the small Kosovan community now in Ireland.

The refugees will be granted temporary protection status, giving them the same social welfare entitlements as programme refugees invited here from Bosnia. They will also be permitted to work, and allowed to stay in Ireland permanently if they so wish.

A health board nurse is to travel to Macedonia today to determine whether acute care will be required for any of the refugees. If necessary, ambulances will be on stand-by at Farranfore Airport in Co Kerry, where the group are due to arrive from Skopje at about 11.20 p.m. on Monday.

It is anticipated, however, that most of the medical care will be provided at the accommodation centres rather than at hospitals. The health board said yesterday that local GPs will cater for the primary care needs of the refugees.

Mr John O'Neill, director of the Refugee Agency, which is overseeing the operation, said the centres have been designed to allow the refugees to be self-sufficient and independent. "They will be able to do their own cooking and have their own privacy as families. At the same time, no one should be isolated as they will be part of a community."

A further 150 refugees will arrive in Ireland on Thursday next. They will be accommodated at a hostel in Baltinglass, Co Wicklow, and the former Army barracks in Kildare, which is to be sold shortly by the Department of Defence.

Maintenance work is continuing on the barracks, which closed last September, to bring it up to the required standard to house the refugees.

The Department of Foreign Affairs is in discussion with hostel operators in Waterford and Cork with a view to housing the next group of refugees there. The Government has agreed to take 1,000 Kosovo refugees in total in the first phase of airlifts under the command of the UNHCR.

In allocating refugees, the UN agency is putting a priority on keeping family members together and sending them to locations where friends or relatives are based.

A spokeswoman for the Department said it was unlikely that relatives of refugees could be found here as there was only a small number of Kosovans in Ireland, all of whom would have come as individual asylum seekers.