Accommodation organised for asylum seekers who have pitched tents in Herbert Park

Dublin City Council has said it is liaising with the International Protection Accommodation Services (IPAS) to arrange accommodation for a number of asylum seekers who pitched tents in Herbert Park, Dublin, on Saturday.

The encampment is the latest to emerge following the clearance of a number of others from areas including the Grand Canal.

A spokesman for the local authority said: “Dublin City Council is currently liaising with our colleagues in IPAS to arrange accommodation for the people who have set up camp in Herbert Park.

“We have been advised that accommodation is available and that offers are being made so we hope to have the matter resolved later this afternoon.”

The Taoiseach said on Friday he is open to a migration reform that would involve asylum seekers being processed in third countries. The policy has been put forward by the European People’s Party (EPP), of which Simon Harris’s Fine Gael party is a member.

[ The Kafkaesque charade on Dublin’s Grand Canal is not ‘common sense’. It is common stupidity ]

However, Minister for Integration Roderic O’Gorman said the Government’s focus should be on domestic immigration measures.

The Taoiseach’s comments at an event in Dublin come as a new camp of homeless asylum seekers emerged in Dublin 4 within hours of a clearance of tents from the Grand Canal on Thursday.

A total of 109 homeless asylum seekers were offered accommodation following a multi-agency clearance of tents from the Grand Canal on Thursday.

The Ballsbridge camp was removed by Friday evening with all those camping there offered accommodation in Citywest.

[ Europe’s homeless asylum seeker crisis: ‘This is not human rights, I am staying in the street with a baby’ ]

It is understood this followed intervention by gardaí in Donnybrook on Friday amid concerns for their safety after a video was posted online on Thursday night showing the newly-pitched tents.

The small encampment of nine tents was located at the corner of Clyde Road and Wellington Road, on a grassy patch of ground by the footpath, just outside an apartment complex.

None of the tents’ occupants were at the scene on Friday morning, though there was evidence of people having slept there, with flip-flops, bottles of water and sleeping bags visible.