Authorities to consider offers of help for asylum seekers

State authorities will meet on Wednesday to consider whether to accept hundreds of pledges of free accommodation for asylum seekers from Syria and other countries.

The Irish Red Cross has received about 500 offers of accommodation including convents, holiday homes and spare bedrooms to help house up to 3,500 people under a resettlement and relocation programme.

Authorities are under pressure to find accommodation over the coming months, with the first groups of asylum seekers likely to come to Ireland before Christmas.

These new arrivals – expected to include Syrian, Iraqi and Eritrean nationals - will go through a fast-track asylum-determination process.

Aslyum seekers are likely to spend their initial months in an “emergency reception and orientation centre”, similar to the direct provision system for asylum seekers.

These applications are likely to be fast-tracked within a period of months under a new International Protection Bill.

A taskforce chaired by the Department of Justice is co-ordinating the relocation programme.

Government departments, State agencies and local authorities have also been examining the suitability of State-owned properties for use by new asylum seekers.

The Irish Red Cross has also been tasked with collating pledges of support from members of the public.

A spokesman said the public response showed there was genuine concern for the plight of asylum seekers displaced by conflict.

“Every pledge that is being made will be seriously examined,” said an Irish Red Cross spokesman. “The numbers coming here are certainly manageable. In any given year, the population fluctuates by much greater amounts. The biggest challenge will be services like schools and other supports.”

Resettled

The Department of Justice has said no decision has yet been made on where asylum seekers will be resettled.

“All options, including the use of State-owned property and privately-owned facilities, are being considered,” said a spokesman.

Irish officials have been in contact with Italian authorities to help select the first intake of asylum seekers under new EU resettlement programmes.

They are working off lists prepared by the Italian authorities, and have the right to refuse to relocate an applicant only where there are reasonable grounds to regard that person as a danger to national security or public order.

Last September the Government agreed, as part of a co-ordinated EU response to the refugee crisis, to accept up to 4,000 people under resettlement and relocation programmes.

That figure includes 3,500 people the State will resettle under dispersal schemes agreed by the European Council last month and 500 others who the Government had previously agreed to take in under a long-standing arrangement with the United Nations.

Anyone accepted for resettlement will be entitled, once their refugee applications have been processed, to apply to have their families join them here.

Sources have privately estimated that over time the total figure likely to arrive here may be in the region of 20,000.