€80 million spent on migrant accommodation in Mayo in two-year period - Lawless

Figures released to the Aontú TD for Mayo, Paul Lawless, show that nearly €80 million has been spent on accommodation for those seeking international protection in Mayo over a 24-month period between 2024 and 2025.

Responding to the new figures, Deputy Lawless said: "This is an eye-watering amount of money. The international protection accommodation system is not fit for purpose, and its dysfunction is costing the taxpayer heavily. The government is paying huge sums into the hands of private wealthy industrial style landlords, for temporary accommodation. €80 million of our taxpayer’s money has been spent in Mayo alone in just two years. Across the country over the past ten years €4 billion has been spent on IPAS. The amount spent in Mayo over a two-year period would have been enough to build 230 houses for the county.”

Deputy Lawless continued: "This is wasted money. It's money we will never see again. Why doesn't the government spend this money on purchasing or building homes, that way the accommodation and infrastructure would be state-owned assets which we could use for decades into the future to house our homeless in the region. “The amount the government has paid to some hotels in rent exceeds the actual value of the hotel in some instances. It is an atrocious waste of money.”

"We know too that the asylum system has long been abused by people who don't actually qualify for asylum, and those who intentionally frustrate the process so as to delay the application process. People who engage in that kind of behaviour - destroying their travel documents and so on - are taking much needed resources from those who genuinely do need them, be it people genuinely fleeing war or indeed our own homeless population.

“It is Aontú's position that those people who try to cheat the system by destroying their documents should be deported properly. We need a fair and just system,” concluded Lawless.