LAST UPDATE | 4 Jul

ACTIONAID IRELAND HAS urged the Minister for Integration Roderic O’Gorman to make lone parents exempt from being evicted from Direct Provision accommodation.

Mothers with children have told the organisation they have been asked to vacate by tomorrow.

The charity said that, in May, letters were sent to people living in Direct Provision that informed them that people who were granted international protection status have to be gone from their provided accommodation by 5 July. 

It further said that mothers with children living in Direct Provision that are supported by its Paving the Way programme were devastated by the letter, and said their chances of securing private accommodation in the current rental market are “almost impossible”. 

“The only other option was to be put in emergency accommodation away from their networks and children’s schools,” ActionAid further said. 

Today in the Dáil, responding to a question by Social Democrats TD Gary Gannon on the situation, the Minister claimed that last year the State, through cooperation with non-Governmental organisations, helped to move 2,000 people from international protection accommodation to independent living.

Gannon asked what the Government is proposing to support the “vulnerable” cohort. O’Gorman said the Government has previously investested “very significant resources” into independent support structures.

Last month The Journal reported that one woman in this situation fear she will have to sleep in her car with three children if she cannot find accommodation and is forced to leave. 

ActionAid said that it is aware that only four out of six women in one Co Wicklow centre have actually been offered emergency accommodation. Those offers were to relocate to Clonmel and Tipperary – meaning their children would have to leave their current schools. 

ActionAid said that an exemption to the eviction letter has been applied to those over 65 and those with significant medical and welfare needs. 

The CEO of the organisation, Karol Balfe, said that it is wrong that women “with no alternative accommodation are being left with this hanging over their heads”. 

She added that it isn’t acceptable for mothers and children to be “uprooted” from their communities and schools, which they have integrated into over “many years”. 
Balfe further said: “So many of these women have already suffered huge trauma and have been uprooted from their homes and forced to flee to Ireland in the first place due to conflict or crisis.”

She said that the prospects of these women securing private accommodation are “practically impossible” due to the current accommodation crisis. 

“As single parents, not from Ireland and being people of colour, the challenges they face are compounded. There are several stories of landlords extorting people trying to leave Direct Provision frantically before the 5th of July because they know they are desperate,” Balfe added. 

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