The Irish government accidentally sent confidential internal communication to every MP in the country last week, revealing a detailed breakdown of all the privately owned accommodations used as temporary migrant shelters—as well as their price tags.
The 19-page document, obtained by The European Conservative through an Irish diplomat in Brussels, was originally sent by the General Secretary of the Department of Equality and Integration, Kevin McCarthy, to the Public Accounts Committee on May 8th of this year. Despite containing six separate notes warning that it is “commercially sensitive” information and “not for publication,” it was accidentally released to parliamentarians in full, without any redactions.
Replying to an earlier inquiry from the Public Accounts Committee, McCarthy stated that his department was housing “approximately 80,000 people in state-funded accommodation,” with an additional 7,000 placed in “pledged accommodation properties” managed by the Red Cross, and a further 2,677 migrants housed through the government’s “Offer a Home” scheme, under which property owners receive a standard payment of €800 per month for sharing their home.
According to the document, the Irish government was spending €37 million per month only on hotel rooms, as McCarthy explicitly states that this figure does not include contractual payments for all other types of accommodation, such as hostels, B&Bs, guesthouses, holiday villages, repurposed nursing homes, and “non-standard” settings—hundreds of units in total.
This corresponds to reports from earlier this year, that revealed that nearly one-third of the country’s overall tourist accommodation rooms are being used by the government to house refugees and migrants, with the share of contracted beds surpassing 50% in multiple counties, such as Longford (64.7%) or Leitrim (81.9%).
According to the leaked memo, Donegal leads the chart with the number of migrant accommodations at 109 (21 hotels and 88 other types of settings), closely followed by Kerry with 107. The largest number of contracted hotels are also in Kerry (28), followed by Dublin (26).
The document also contains a detailed breakdown of monthly payments to 176 hotels across the country. Most receive between €100,000 and 500,000, but five of them make seven figures a month, including the Red Cow Moran in West Dublin (€2.2 million) and a Holiday Inn next to the Dublin Airport (€2.1 million). A separate spreadsheet shows that Red Cow was housing 871 migrants, while the Holiday Inn accommodated 618, at the end of April.
Many politicians reacted with dismay following the leak. Gary O’Neill, a councilor from Wicklow—where six hotels are granted nearly €2.4 million between them—said the government is paying thousands of euros extra on top of normal accommodation fees.
“There are people making a lot of money out of this,” O’Neill said. “If you raise any concerns around this issue they use the tactic imported from America, they have called people far-right, I’ve had it myself in the council chamber.”
O’Neill also described how the entire system works as an incentive for migrants to come to Ireland, even from countries that have previously accommodated them. “I have it on good authority that some of the people coming here are actually coming from the UK because the benefits here are better, it appears the government are openly admitting this themselves now.”
Apart from renting out existing hotels and B&Bs, the Irish government is also preparing to establish several new migrant accommodation centers by buying and repurposing large vacant buildings around the country, each to house hundreds of individuals.
A separate document, also seen by The European Conservative, shows that there are at least seven of these centers that will become operational soon, four of them in the same town of Drogheda, Louth, that could house several thousand migrants between them before the end of the year.
