The Department of Justice is not in the business of trading with local communities over the numbers of asylum-seekers it sends to towns and villages around the State, the official in charge of the dispersal programme has said.
Ms Berenice O'Neill, the head of the Department's Directorate for Asylum Support Services (DRASS), said communities' concerns would be listened to, but they could not veto plans to settle asylum-seekers in their area.
Ms O'Neill, who will take up a new position as Refugee Applications Commissioner this month, was speaking at UCD yesterday where she attended a conference on the Human Rights of Refugees and Asylum-Seekers in Ireland. The one-day event was organised by Amnesty International and the Irish Refugee Council.
Ms O'Neill said the recent agreement by residents in Clogheen to accept up to 20 asylum-seekers in the local Vee Valley Hotel was struck between residents and the proprietor, not with Department officials.
The Department had originally agreed with the owner to place up to 30 asylum-seekers in the hotel, which has been targeted by arsonists. Ms O'Neill said the building would have to be reassessed following the fire attack.
She said the directorate was "in general not in the business of trading, but we do listen to the concerns of communities and we don't want to put too many asylum-seekers in any community. We are very conscious of numbers."
She said officials from the directorate now had more time to consult communities, as the initial emergency had abated. She accepted there was a need to spend more time talking to local people. "But that doesn't mean they have a veto or can say `not in our community'," she added. Ms O'Neill also defended Government plans to introduce fingerprinting of asylum-seekers soon. This was widely used in Europe and would allow EU member-states to establish which country should process an individual's application, she said.
Ms O'Neill will take up her post as Refugee Applications Commissioner this month, and will be responsible for overseeing the processing of applications for refugee status, currently running at 1,000 a month. About 25 per cent of applicants were granted refugee status after appeal and the Government may eventually have to resort to arresting people prior to deporting them.
In her address to the conference, Ms O'Neill said she was looking forward to the challenge of overseeing the processing of asylum applications in a "fair, prompt and independent manner".
The Government's target was to process asylum claims within six months, with up to two months for cases which were easy to decide on. Currently, the waiting time took was between four months and 18 months. Some 4,378 people had applied for asylum in the State this year up to last Friday. With such numbers, it was important to have the necessary structures, services and processes in place, she said.
Ms O'Neill said the Department had almost exhausted its stock of accommodation in hostels, hotels and guesthouses. Once this happened, it would begin housing asylum-seekers in mobile homes and other prefabricated accommodation.
The Department is also planning purpose-built reception centres within the next 18 months to two years, and had begun viewing sites for this purpose. Ms O'Neill said the Refugee Applications Centre on Dublin's Lower Mount Street, set up in 1997 as a "one-stop shop" for legal, social and medical services, could no longer cope with the numbers of asylum-seekers arriving.