The tender to provide a Direct Provision centre in Oughterard has been withdrawn by the applicant. They had recently appealed to the Department of Justice to engage with them over alternative models for accommodating asylum seekers. Suggestion boxes were being distributed around the town to encourage the community to come up with alternative proposals for Direct Provision, he said. We need to move the conversation from seeing asylum seekers as a threat to the community.”Mr Killoran called for asylum seekers to be accommodated in homes as the numbers of asylum seekers in Ireland are “very small” in comparison with numbers throughout Europe. The Direct Provision model “tends to cluster people together,” he said.

Source: Irish Examiner October 01, 2019 09:15 UTC