Ireland will accept thousands of refugees fleeing conflict in the Middle East and North Africa and will look at the possibility of accommodating some of them in vacant State facilities such as former army barracks according to Minister for Defence Simon Coveney.
Mr Coveney said the Government had already decided to increase its intake of migrants and refugees from the Mediterranean at a Cabinet meeting this week prior to the publication of a photograph of a little Syrian boy who drowned trying to get from Turkey to Greece.
But Mr Coveney said that the outpouring of emotion by Irish people and their desire for the Government to be more generous and accept more than the 1,120 they have already agreed to was understandable in the wake of Aylan Kurdi’s death.
“People want us to do more and that is because of an outpouring of emotion – every father and every mother looking at that three-year-old boy on the beach, looked at him as if he could have been their own child,” said Mr Coveney.
"Alan Kelly said to me yesterday afternoon – and he's a pretty tough operator – he said to me 'Look, I actually couldn't sleep last night – I couldn't get that image out of my mind' and I could actually relate to that because I had seen it on social media as well ."
"And actually I had seen photographs that were nearly as traumatic as that over the summer because some of the imagery we got back from our naval ships, particularly with that awful tragedy on 6th August [when the LÉ Niamh recovered 25 bodies] was incredibly traumatic.
“But this is what is happening in the Mediterranean at the moment. We have families – children, women and men that are dying and drowning and that are being taken advantage of by people traffickers in massive numbers and we cannot simply ignore what is happening.”
Speaking in Cork where he officially opened a refurbished Enable Ireland shop on North Main Street, Mr Coveney said it wasn't possible to put an estimate on how many more refugees Ireland would accept but he believed, like Mr Kelly, that it would be "thousands".
"There are currently 800,000 on the shores of Libya waiting to get on a boat to cross the Mediterranean, being manipulated by smugglers and human traffickers who are trying to make money out of their misery so Europe as a collective needs to do a lot more."
Mr Coveney said that the Irish allocation of 600 made by the European Commission was based on a Europe-wide figure of 40,000 refugees but that had since been revised up to 150,000 so proportionately Ireland would accept at least 1,800 to 2,000, he said.
Asked whether Ireland would accommodate these refugees in the direct provision system as it currently does with asylum seekers, Mr Coveney acknowledged that the direct provision system was flawed and stressed that people needed to be treated with dignity.
“We want to move away from direct provision . . . although having said that, if you look at the direct provision centres in Ireland versus the facilities many asylum seekers have in other parts of Europe – the facilities here are much, much better but they are still not good enough.
“I think Irish people are uncomfortable with the fact that people are in hostels with families living in single rooms or two rooms and we need to try and ensure that people who live in Ireland have the dignity of a home that is fit for purpose,” he said.
Mr Coveney said that he could see local authorities becoming involved in carrying out audits of facilities in their areas as happened in relation to homelessness and he instanced the availability of former army barracks that might be used to accommodate people.
“Whatever commitments the Government make here, we need to make sure that we set aside the resources to ensure that we can develop accommodation facilities that are fit for purpose and will treat people like human beings rather than numbers when they arrive in Ireland.
“The message I would like to send is the Government wants to be generous but also we want to make sure that whatever decision we make to relocate refugees results in us being able to do so in a way that is compassionate and proper as regards housing and healthcare needs.
“What we should not do is make offers that we can’t deliver on later on in time and results in seeing migrants and refugees homeless in Ireland – that isn’t something that I think we can allow happen . . . we need to be as generous as we can be, within reason.”
