A request from the Office of Public Works to locate a "flotel" in Sligo Harbour has been rejected by the Sligo Harbour Board.
The request was made last week, but, according to Mr Seamus Monaghan, chairman of the board, the harbour is totally unsuitable. "I did a report a few months ago for the Department of the Marine, and I sent it to the OPW," he told The Irish Times.
"It would have been in breach of safety and fire regulations. There will be 350 people on board asleep at night. You would need access for fire services. Who in this country is trained to fight a fire aboard a ship?"
Both Sinn Fein and the Labour Party had already objected to the proposed berthing of the flotel on humanitarian grounds. "It is clear that flotels are a totally unsuitable and inappropriate form of accommodation for asylum-seekers and are not wanted by those whom they are intended to accommodate or by the majority of Irish people," said two Labour councillors, Mr Brian Scanlon and Ms Veronica Cawley, in a statement.
They also objected to the dispersal of asylum-seekers to remote locations, combined with direct provision and small cash payments. "The combination of the remote location and the lack of cash constitutes a form of benign internment which is not an appropriate part of any humane regime."
Mr Sean MacManus, of Sinn Fein, who is deputy mayor and a member of the harbour board, described the flotels as "prison ships".
"Housing refugees in such a manner will create more problems than it will solve and is clearly an inhumane way to treat them." There would be uproar, he said, if a ship full of cattle was moored in Sligo for up to two years. "Yet this is what the Government proposes to do with human beings. The proposal would create major health and safety problems for those living and working aboard such ships."