Roderic O’Gorman rules out ‘dual use’ of D Hotel in Drogheda for asylum seekers and tourists over child safety concerns
Mr O’Gorman has definitively ruled out the so-called dual use proposal in a letter to public representatives in Louth that was issued on Saturday afternoon.
The dual use proposal had been floated by Taoiseach Leo Varadkar last month in response to local concerns about the D Hotel in the Louth town being used entirely to accommodate asylum seekers, stripping Drogheda of more than half of its tourist beds.
Up to 500 people are expected to be housed in the D Hotel in the coming days with the first arrivals early next week as part of a two-year deal contract between the hotel operator and the Department of Integration.
“From a child safeguarding point of view, there are significant issues associated with either dual use option,” Mr O’Gorman said in his letter to public representatives.
“By operating a hotel as dual purpose IPAS residents would be exposed to more risk or potential harm due to the constant throughput of commercial customers arriving in the hotel and it would be substantially more difficult for the mandated person to manage child protection.”
The Green Party minister’s letter also raises issues about the layout of the six-storey hotel, saying that all lifts and stair access is communal for all floors and there is no ability to put in place solutions that would adequately separate areas or floors within the hotel.
Mr O’Gorman writes that it is “difficult to imagine how areas could be truly separated” in a manner that would be compliant with child safeguarding.
“Please be assured that very serious consideration was given to these proposals,” Mr O’Gorman writes.
“However, from my Department’s perspective, given the State’s duty to ensure the safety of IP applicants, especially child IP applicants, we believe that would not be feasible to operate the D Hotel using a “dual use” occupancy model.”
He said that the hotel’s bar and function room can still be used by members of the public as they are stand alone and “can be separated from other areas of the hotel”.
Mr O’Gorman writes that his department has told another accommodation provider in the town that is currently accommodating Ukrainians that it can relocate these refugees to refurbished properties in the coming routes.
“We are working with the operator to bring these beds back into tourism use,” he writes.
Mr O’Gorman also writes that a new round of the community recognition fund will be announced shortly and that the Government is working on a new strategy to “ensure that we do not rely on private hotels to accommodate those seeking refuge in the future”.
Local Labour TD Ged Nash said he was “extremely disappointed” with the decision.
“This is all a consequence of the government’s abject failure to provide State-owned accommodation,” he said.
“Attempts by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil to isolate a Green Minister won’t wash. Fine Gael and Fianna Fail have collective responsibility for this too and they have some explaining to do to the people of Drogheda.”
