AN IMMIGRATION DEBATE on RTÉ on Monday saw election candidates duke it out on a subject that’s been a hot political topic over the past few years.

Perhaps the most heated exchange of the night came between Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín and Green Party Leader and Minister for Integration, Roderic O’Gorman.

When complaining about the government’s handling of people seeking refuge, in particular refugees from Ukraine, Tóibín presented a seemingly startling figure.

“One third of all hospitality outside of the M50 are currently in a contract with the state to provide accommodation,” Tóibín said.

“That’s not correct”, O’Gorman immediately retorted. Tóibín then said he was basing the figure on an answer to a Parliamentary Question, which he said proved his claim; O’Gorman again denied the statistic was correct.

When pressed by presenter Katie Hannon on what the actual figure might be, O’Gorman estimated “about 14 or 15 percent”.

So who is right? Is Tóibín correct in saying that one-third of hotels outside Dublin are under government contract for people seeking refuge?

Beds

With tens of thousands of people now seeking refuge in Ireland every year, as well as a massive influx of people fleeing the war in Ukraine, increasing amounts of public money have been spent on finding somewhere for them to sleep.

The cost of doing so has skyrocketed since the pandemic, with well over 100,000 Ukrainian refugees and tens of thousands of additional people seeking international protection coming to Ireland since 2022.

As the Government has scrambled to find somewhere for all these people to stay, they have looked to the private market to house them – including commercial hotels, which is what Tóibín was getting at with his claim.

When asked about the source for its figures, Aontú responded by referring us to an article published in The Irish Times on 29 March, 2023.

Although the old article appears to corroborate Tóibín’s claim, the source of its figures actually overestimated them.

The article quoted the Chief Executive of Fáilte Ireland as saying that one in three “tourism beds” outside Dublin were “unavailable due to State housing contracts” at the time.

“It was from here Deputy Tóibín obtained the statistics he used in the television debate,” an Aontú spokesperson said.

It should be noted that this claim is a little different than the one said by Tóibín during the debate.

“One third of all hospitality outside of the M50 are currently in a contract with the state to provide accommodation” implies that one third of hospitality providers are being referred to, as the government does not enter into contracts with the beds themselves.

But the figures are wrong.

Fáilte Ireland, or the National Tourism Development Authority of Ireland, have repeatedly analysed the number of asylum seekers and refugees staying in guest accommodation, and the amount of “tourism bed stock” those people take up.

A release published by Fáilte Ireland June 2023 noted that the group had previously estimated that “28% of all Fáilte Ireland registered tourism bed stock was contracted to the State” and that “excluding Dublin, the figure was provided as 34%.” — apparently corroborating Tóibín’s claim.

However, that release goes on to say “we now know that this assessment overstated the percentage of Fáilte Ireland registered tourism bed stock under-contract”, and gives a new more accurate estimate of “all registered tourism bed stock” that is under Government contract: 13 percent.

Fáilte Ireland told The Journal that their most recent report was released in May of this year. “Nationally, 10% of registered beds are under contract”, that report reads, significantly undercutting Tóibín’s estimate, and even O’Gorman’s by a few percent.

The report also gives a county-by-county breakdown of the beds that are contracted to the government.

Not one county has anywhere close to a third of beds used for people seeking international protection.

The highest, Co Clare, had a quarter of its beds contracted out, while Meath and Louth, the next highest, had 19% contracted out.

Half of the counties had less than 10% of its beds contracted out, including Dublin at 9% (indicating that Dublin is about average with the rest of the country).

The report notes that there are also beds under government in premises that are not registered with Fáilte Ireland, but does not have a tally of the total amount of these.

In an update last December, Fáilte Ireland had given the breakdown of what those premises might be: “former hotels, inns, lodges, unlisted guesthouses, unregistered B&Bs, re-purposed accommodation retreat centres.”

However, even assuming the highest estimates of unregistered tourism beds contracted out, the figures do not indicate that a third of hotel accommodation outside of Dublin is under Government contract.

The update from last December also had another statistic that was not included in the latest release: an “All County Average excluding Dublin” for beds contracted to the government. That figure was 13 percent.

Parliamentary Questions

Tóibín said during the debate with O’Gorman that a Parliamentary Question backed up his claim that a third of hospitality outside the M50 was under government contract. 

However, it is unclear which Parliamentary Question Tóibín was referring to.

The website of the Irish Oireachtas, which lists all PQs and responses to them, shows that Tóibín himself has asked more than 5,000 questions during his time in the Dáil.

One of these included a question to O’Gorman asking for a breakdown of how refugees and international protection applicants are accommodated in each county, with reference to the number of hospitality providers housing them.

“There are currently 81 guest houses, 8 hostels and 57 hotels providing emergency accommodation to international protection applicants (IPAs),” O’Gorman responded on 23 May 2023.

There was no county-by-county breakdown for these figures, though there was for the number of International Protection Applicants.

However, these numbers do not tell us the proportion of beds taken, which were referred to directly in the Fáilte Ireland reports.

Could those 146 businesses be what Tóibín is referring to? Could they make up a third of the hospitality outside the M50?

This is unlikely, given the sheer number of hotels in Ireland. The Irish Hotels Federation, an industry lobbying body, says it represents “almost 1,000 hotels and guesthouses nationwide”.

Fáilte Ireland said there were 835 hotels in the country last year (as well as 118 guesthouses and 635 B&Bs), while statistics provided by industry research group IBIS World said there are 1,630 hotel businesses in Ireland.

The figures in the May 2023 answer are also now 18 months old and since the PQ was answered, and many of the contracts mentioned have lapsed.

More recent responses to Parliamentary Questions given this year also touched on the question about the number of hospitality businesses being used to house asylum seekers and Ukrainian refugees.

In February, Sinn Féin TD Pearse Doherty asked O’Gorman for a breakdown of accommodation “by county, currently provided to beneficiaries of temporary protection from Ukraine and persons in the international protection process”.

Those two groups make up all beneficiaries of the International Protection system. 

O’Gorman gave the number of hotels being used as 70, and said that of those, 21 were in Dublin. Again, the 49 non-Dublin hotels mentioned by O’Gorman are not likely to make up a third of all hotels outside the M50.

In April, Catherine Martin, the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, told the Dáil that “12% of all registered tourism accommodation stock nationally was under contract to the State”, though she attributed this to a 2023 report from Fáilte Ireland.

The Journal contacted Peadar Tóibín about his claim, but received no response by the time of publication.

Verdict

Peadar Tóibín said during a debate that a third of “hospitality outside of the M50” is under government contract for people who have sought protection.

Roderic O’Gorman denied this, saying it was less than half that proportion.  Tóibín also said a Parliamentary Question proved his point; however, The Journal could not find any such PQ.

When asked, a spokesperson for the Aontú told The Journal that the claim was based on a March 2023 Irish Times article that quotes Fáilte Ireland numbers about beds, rather than providers.

However, these figures are more than 18 months out of date and Fáilte Ireland also said since that those numbers had been overestimated. 

As such, there is no evidence that a third of “hospitality outside of the M50” is under government contract for people who have sought protection.

The most recent figures from Fáilte Ireland, published in May, gives a national figure of 10% of tourist accommodation being under contract to the State, though this refers to beds as opposed to providers.

As a result, we find Peadar Tóibín’s claim that a third of hospitality businesses outside the M50 are contracted to the State to provide accommodation for asylum seekers and refugees FALSE. As per our verdict guide, this means the claim is inaccurate.

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