Simon Harris says more accommodation will come online soon after 30 tents are set up along the Grand Canal

Speaking to the media at Corrine Mart in Fermoy, Co Cork, he said Ireland is facing a difficult situation as large numbers of people come to the country while there are “limitations” in providing accommodation.

This comes as more tents went up along the banks of Dublin’s Grand Canal overnight, less than 24 hours after a camp was removed from the area.

Some 30 tents have been erected after asylum seekers were moved to tented accommodation on state-owned sites yesterday.

The tents have been set up between the McCartney Bridge and the Leeson Street Bridge.

“A lot of that will look like tents with toilet facilities in public places, but a safer environment both from a public health point of view and from a legal point of view,” the Taoiseach said.

Harris said that, in addition to accommodation, other options available to the Government are being examined to implement a sustainable immigration policy.

Amid some tensions, the Taoiseach said it is important for the public to be aware that there are “very vulnerable” people coming to Ireland seeking protection.

He said his government’s responsibility is to demonstrate that rules exist and that its system is “fair and firm.”

“Immigration has benefited this country and continues to benefit it, but people also want to know that we have a rules-based system. They want to know that when someone comes here they can be processed quickly, that they can get a ‘yes’, and if they get a ‘yes’, they can make a contribution to Irish society. But equally, if they get a ‘no’, the rules work in relation to that as well,” the Taoiseach said.

Harris said there is no update on the government’s position on asylum seekers crossing into Ireland from the UK via Northern Ireland.

“The current situation is that the Minister will bring forward legislation to regularize the agreement that is already in place,” the Taoiseach said.

He said the “most important thing” Ireland could do to successfully tackle immigration is to have processing times that ensure people get “clarity and certainty” quickly.

A major effort was launched early yesterday to relocate 163 people to state-provided accommodation in Dublin. One of these sites was in Crooksling, and the other was the former Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum.

The makeshift camp had developed along the Grand Canal following the removal of a “tent city” on Mount Street, near the International Protection Office. Barriers were put up to prevent further tent erection.

Within six hours of yesterday’s authorization, tents were also erected in Ringsend and East Wall.

At a press conference shortly after the clean-up operation on the Grand Canal yesterday, Harris said the camps that developed would not be allowed to remain in place.

“Those days are gone. Those days are over. That’s not going to happen and the Government is absolutely united on this,” the Taoiseach said.

Harris insisted that the barriers erected along the banks of the canal after the tents were removed were not a long-term plan.

“The multi-agency response involves a number of different actions being taken. “It doesn’t involve building long-term barriers in parts of our city, but in the short term that may be a requirement.”

Tánaiste Micheál Martin said in the Dáil yesterday that the tent issue would be addressed “wherever it arises”.

“It is not good for immigrants, nor for asylum seekers, nor for residents, nor for the area in general. “I think it’s just not acceptable,” Mr. Martin said. “There is a determined plan to address tenting wherever it arises.”

Public Expenditure Minister Paschal Donohoe said the Government was processing more International Protection (IP) applications and more emergency accommodation was needed for those seeking protection.

“In the short term, this is about the decision to put more people into parts of our Government to allow applications… to be handled more quickly,” he said on RTÉ. tomorrow ireland.

“We have doubled resources, we have tripled the number of cases that are being processed. As we do that, we need to provide more emergency accommodation.”

Donohoe said that while there was a plan to establish 14,000 state-owned emergency accommodation beds and introduce the EU migration pact, the response was taking place while there were multiple wars in the world.

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“There is a plan in place, but this plan is in the context of a war in Sudan, wars in the Middle East, a war in Ukraine and now more people moving around the world since World War II,” the minister said.

Donohoe said Ireland had previously seen 3,000 IP claimants a year seeking asylum here, but that number had more than doubled in 2024 so far.

And he added: “That is why, in the short term, what we are doing in terms of emergency processing and accommodation is necessary. I think people like those just mentioned here should not be in tents on our streets or by the canal.s.

“We are going to have them in an alternative, but it is emergency accommodation, while we accumulate the state and administered beds that the Government has committed to creating.”

The Government has said it will urgently focus on finding suitable places to house asylum seekers to avoid repeated tent camps.

HSE properties, land owned by the Department of Defense and sites previously ruled out for housing are among the sites to be considered, a meeting of the Taoiseach and agencies involved in the asylum system was told yesterday.

At the meeting, the Taoiseach firmly insisted that a “siloed approach” by government departments – whereby the problem is largely left to officials in Roderic O’Gorman’s Integration Department – ​​was “to stop now”.

A spokesman said the urgent focus would be to free up more state land to house those arriving.

This would even include sites selected by the Land Development Agency for housing, but not considered suitable for such development.

A particular target appears to be abandoned land near the city center because that is where newcomers want to congregate.

One source said of the camp issue: “There is a deep awareness that the sentiment among migrants seems to be that the quickest way to resolve the issue is to join such an environment.”