Asylum seeker encampment grows on bank of Dublin’s Grand Canal after ‘tent city’ cleared

The encampment is close to the International Protection Office (IPO) on Mount Street, from where more than 200 asylum seekers who had been living in tents on footpaths were moved on Wednesday.

Those men were taken from the Mount Street camp to facilities at the Citywest hotel in Dublin and Crooksling in Co Dublin.

The tents on Mount Street were dismantled and the area around the IPO was cordoned off.

More asylum seekers gathered at the office on Thursday but were told the authorities were at that point not able to provide them with accommodation.

A number of homeless migrants subsequently pitched tents in a private park in south Dublin on Thursday. However, those men left the area on Friday.

Tents have now been erected along the Grand Canal close to Mount Street Bridge, with the number of people there growing to around 70 by Sunday morning.

On Friday, Taoiseach Simon Harris defended the Government’s handling of the asylum seeker accommodation issue.

He said “makeshift encampments” on public roads and footpaths were illegal, and “never the solution”.

“It’s also not in the interest of the people who are sleeping in those tents, people who don’t have access to proper sanitation,” he said.

Mr Harris added: “We work at this every single day but I need to be clear and honest with people coming to our country, we are doing our very best in very difficult and challenging circumstances to provide accommodation.

“But accommodation isn’t always readily available but we are keeping working at it day by day.

“The conversation about migration can’t just be one about accommodation, because no matter how much accommodation you have, if it’s just a conversation about accommodation, accommodation will fill.

“It also has to be a conversation about faster processing times, about efficient and effective systems.”