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A SURGE IN the numbers of asylum seekers living in Direct Provision centres sent the fees paid to private firms operating the network of centres across the country soaring to €72 million, including Vat, last year.
In 2018, the numbers of people being accommodated in direct provision increased by 18% from 5,096 at the start of the year to 5,997 at the end of December.
The sharp increase in numbers has resulted in an increase in revenue for the private firms operating the centres, with new figures published by the Department of Justice showing that six firms received payments in excess of €5 million last year including two receiving payments in excess of €7 million.
The figures show that the contractor to receive the highest amount from the Department of Justice was Mosney Holidays plc which received fees of €8.69m.
Mosney Holidays plc operates a direct provision centre for 600 asylum seekers at Mosney in Co Meath and the €8.6m it received last year brings to €136m the company has received from the State between 2002 and 2018 for its Direct Provision service.
The increased numbers of people seeking asylum here has had Department of Justice officials scrambling to identify new Direct Provision centres.
Last year, a move by the Department of Justice to set up a new centre for 115 asylum seekers in the north Clare village of Lisdoonvarna led to tensions in the local community after a local hotelier, Marcus White made his King Thomond hotel available.
Now, the new figures show that White’s James White & Co Ltd received fees of €1.24m for 2018.
Much attention was also given to the arrival of a group of Syrian refugees at the Abbeyfield Hotel at Ballaghaderreen in Co Roscommon in December last year. The figures show that the owner of the hotel, Next Week & Co Ltd received payments of €3.16m in 2018.
Along with Mosney Holidays Plc, one other business received payments in excess of €7m – last year, Alan Hyde’s Barlow Group last year received fees of €7.5m and the group accommodates asylum seekers across Cork and Waterford.
Millstreet Equestrian Services which provides accommodation for over 500 asylum seekers in Cork and Waterford received payments of €6.53 million.
Between 2000 and 2018, Millstreet Equestrian Services has received €82.5 million in fees from the State.
Aramark’s Campbell Catering Ltd last year received €5.89m for operating State owned direct provision centres at Knockalisheen, Co Clare, Co Cork and Co Meath where over 825 asylum seekers are accommodated.
Bridgestock caters for around 500 asylum seekers in Ballyhaunis, Co Mayo and Sligo town and the €5.8m received last year brings to €97m the firm has received in payments between 2000 and 2018.
The firm which operates the largest direct provision centre in the capital, Clondalkin Towers Hotel, Fazyard Ltd last year received €5.5 million.
East Coast Catering Ltd which accommodates around 600 asylum seekers in Dublin and Louth last year received €4.4m.
Maplestar Ltd accommodates 200 asylum seekers at the Eglinton Hotel at Salthill, Co Galway and received €3m in payments.
The figures also show that Onsite Field Management received fees of €2.8 million to provide services for 335 asylum seekers at four centres in Co Kerry.
Sidetracks Ltd, which accommodates 162 asylum seekers at a Great Western Hotel in Galway last year received €2m in fees while another firm, Tattonward Ltd which accommodates 175 asylum seekers at Drumgoask, Monaghan received €2.1m.
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I have the utmost respect for real asylum seekers but I worked with asylum seekers that originally came from Bangladesh and Nigeria. When they got Irish citizenship the summer Holliday’s were back in the countries they were fleeing from . It is a bit of a joke.
@DavidOReilly: I know a Nigerian family who got social housing 3 bed flat from the council,spend the whole summer holidays in Nigeria ,all the children go to private schools,father is a taxi driver, (171 bmw)so what’s the meaning of social and affordable housing?5.8 million to a catering company last year while there is que’s on grafton street nightly for homeless people trying to feed their family’s??
Private Companies Profiting From Misery.
@Mark Plunkett: The point is the state is making millionaires out of a few people who own shoddy ‘hotels’ and serving people up slop and living in awful conditions. A bit like the Magdelene laundries. Ireland remains the same on so many levels.
@Mark Plunkett: hope you reported them to social welfare
@Tony Lyons: yea I did and to the council rep who gave him the apt,nothing to do with him he is only doing his job so I’m told,the same for the Romanian couple who got a two bedroom apt with one child,now 10 people living there,reported it to the council again,the excuse was the were in a b& b with dampness for a year,same excuse as the polish national I know in Sallynoggin who got a 3 bed penthouse with 2 kids,on the housing list 2 years,the house he was renting was demolished for a private developer to build a shopping center,people would want to wake up to this kip and this govt who run it.
I’m all for helping the needy. ESPECIALLY genuine refugees from war zones.
But I had a mental breakdown a few years ago and couldn’t get the help I needed from the state. I had to go to a charity for help.
I work, pay taxes and a few members of my family fought for Ireland during the 1910’s and 20’s and helped us gain independence but still felt absolutely abandoned by my country.
Look after your own citizens Government.
@Rebecca De Stanleigh: I’m sorry that you had to go through that and that the state had failed you but what’s the solution to ppl looking for refuge/asylum that find themselves here? We can’t escort them to Rosslare. We are legally obliged as a member of the UN to process their claims at a minimum.
@Bruce van der Gutschmitzer: 100%.
I just wish they organize their finances better.
And us citizens need to be better looked after. It’s extremely frustrating.
@Rebecca De Stanleigh: That’s what we get when FF and FG are voted in. They choose where to spend the money and they spend it in the wrong areas.
@ObsidianShine: you’re right. But other parties aren’t too attractive either.
It’s a disaster.
Let’s just remember Ireland;
Asylum seeker =/= Economic Migrant
This is what happens when the liberals get into bed with the elite. This system will not end as long as there is tidy profits being made. These people would be better off relocated to a safe country nearest their homeland and that €12,300 per head spent there on them – they would be much better off.
@Daniel Dunne: Open Border liberals that is.
@Daniel Dunne: once they set foot here (provided this is the first EU cou try they land in) then we are legally obliged to process them.
@Bruce van der Gutschmitzer: This country is very rarely the first one they land in
@Bruce van der Gutschmitzer: book me a direct flight to Lagos or Abuja from Dublin if you can
Sure pile them in as Leo says they are a benefit to our country?? We are a bunch of mugs nowadays and it’s only going to get worse.
Disgraceful
@John: tip of the iceberg, more and more and more will come
Seriously with all the problems we have here in
Our own backyard with can’t afford to look after our neighbors problems as well. Being practical about our situation, 72 million could go along way to putting things right here first before opening our doors to other people.
@Joe M Donald: Not to mention the close to €750,000,000 we give away in foreign aid annually. It seems we’ve got to pay for solving the worlds problems in their countries and on their citizens when they land here.
@Joe M Donald: the refugees don’t profit, the guys providing the accommodation are. Ultimately it is a few of our ‘own’ that are being made wealthy by this. It certainly doesn’t go to the refugees.
@Jude: innocency, sweetness & naivety
I see once they are successful, the gov are signing them all up to vote, so the gov parties will get more votes in the elections. They’ll vote for the current gov because i’m sure they’ll be told by suttle means or political scaremongering by FFG that a change of gov and there is no guarante they can stay.
@Adrian: Thats awful nonsense.
@Clifford Brennan: No its not Adrian is dead right.
@Adrian: that’s a good one. You well know it’s your friends who are campaigning for the direct provision people’s eligibility to vote
@Derek Poutch: Is he? Are “FFG” employing “suttle” means and saying to new arrivals vote for us or its likely you cant stay? Ffs.
@Neville Bartos: and who are my friends?
@Adrian: anyone but FF or FG
@Clifford Brennan: At this stage FFG will try just about anything in order to stay in power. They know now that they will need “new” votes in order for the gravy train to keep on chugging along. There combined vote at the moment is around 50 per cent and getting smaller so yes I would not put it past them to do this, the slieveens that they are.
The journal should be renamed “The Daily Trigger”
@Earl of Daventry: a story about a trump supporting catholic who is also an asylum seeking cyclist with Israeli political leanings would really get things going.
At an average of €12,300 per ‘seeker’, I’ll take two please. God knows they be treated better too!
The problem surely lies in the amount of time taken to process applications. It has to be a soul destroying process for genuine asylum seekers who have fled persecution and terror in their home countries. Each one must necessarily be taken seriously but unsuccessful candidates should be deported if their application is rejected. Who is paying for the legal aid they get for numerous appeals? The case of the lady from Nigeria who went all the way to the High Court only to be eventually deported springs to mind – cost to us perhaps millions.. We currently have a porous border with Northern Ireland through which many economic migrants from the UK are entering and claiming asylum. I also have met the people mostly of African origin who, as soon as they are eligible for passports are arranging family holidays back to the country they apparently fled in terror. We need a proactive Government Department which has the staff and ability to process applications inside at maximum 6 months and if leave is given to appeal a rejection it should be on a once off basis.
There’s lots of money to be made from misery.
As someone who worked in law enforcement there are genuine asylum seekers but there are quite a few who abuse the system.
Soft touch. Great little country if your a scammer and claim refugee status. Buy a big boat,close all DP centres and house all “refugees” like Australia off shore and make them prove they are genuine refugees.
Like our ‘criminal justice system’, there are many players who have a lot invested in the ‘refugee’ crisis. Both crises will be perpetuated until the cash cow factor is addressed. If there was as much financial incentive in rescuing indigenous Irish citizens from dying in poverty on the streets, we wouldn’t have a homeless crisis. Benign domestic actions might not generate the same pathos as pulling people out of the Med, people that you’ve encouraged to go seafaring in the nautical equivalent of a sieve, but, ‘Charity begins at home’ allegedly.
Vote the national party or gemma o doherty aci and all this will stop!
Ireland is funded to look after refugees in need, the questions you should be asking is where do the companies that earn such large amounts of money keep their money to avoid taxes in this country, my believe is that it goes out of Ireland like many large other companies availing of the purposely made loopholes in our System sadly to make the rich even richer on the back of the less well off .
https://jrnl.ie/4528308
Worth a read in case it was missed , posted late at night so it would be missed by the reader
There is a rule they are not allowed to return for 6 years but who is checking .
Imagine how many houses they could build for the homeless. It was the same in the UK years ago, (worse now probably) my niece’s boyfriend was a black guy (really nice bloke) born and breed in the UK and could get nothing, no help from anywhere, the social told him to fly out, fly back in, claim for asylum, and he will get everything. sick but true. Wonderful eh?
This Irish Times account from a Nigerian Priest appeared on Aug 2000
“Stories about Nigerian oppression are lies. Nigerian law forces no one to be circumcised and prohibits infliction of all tribal marks and mutilations, with a penalty of seven years’ imprisonment.
Another false claim made by Nigerian “asylum-seekers” is that they are fleeing political persecution.
Peculiarly, those claiming to be “fleeing unrest” in Nigeria are here, despite there being many stable places in Nigeria, a country many times bigger than Ireland. Real refugees can’t afford the exorbitant air fares to get here. Most Nigerians in Europe are simply seeking a more comfortable life. A distinction must be made between economic migrants and those seeking asylum from political or religious persecution.”
Money making racket for the owners
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