East End Hotel in Portarlington, Co Laois; Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan
Further to the Department of Justice claiming at the weekend that a video showing ten beds in one room for asylum seekers living in a direct provision centre at the East End Hotel in Portarlington, Co Laois was staged – a claim the group Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland wholly rejected…
Yesterday Patrick O’Connell, of the Sunday World, tweeted a video from last October showing ten beds in one room in the same hotel.
Mr O’Connell explained that at the time the Department of Justice “verified” the situation and “asked for beds to be removed”.
Here is video of 10 bed room in East End Hotel @sundayworld sent to DOJ in October – DOJ verified & asked for beds to be removed – 8 people were sleeping in this room – video was also independently verified pre-print – can @DeptJusticeIRL explain saturday claim it was staged? pic.twitter.com/Y2iWmjpC5i
— patrick o’connell (@patoconnell101) January 6, 2020
DOJ said in October: The room in some video footage (Room 17) with 10 beds is over 4,000 cubic feet therefore 10 persons in that room is compliant
… in order to further improve living conditions … Department has entered discussions to reduce the number of beds in that room.— patrick o’connell (@patoconnell101) January 6, 2020
And yet.
At the weekend, the department said: “Similar claims were made about the accommodation in the hotel last autumn and subsequent department inspections confirmed that the accommodation arrangements at the hotel had been misrepresented in a staged video at that time.”
There you go now.
Yesterday: “The More People You Have In A Centre, The More Money You Can Make”
More needs to be said about the ridiculousness of the DoJ coming out and saying this video was staged. absolutely pathetic, conspriacy-enabling, lies. whoever wrote and approved that should fall on their sword.
+1
DOJ rang hotel owner, owner said it was staged and that became the official narrative. No physical check, certainly no unannounced check to verify.
Charlie’s Angels caught out again.
Sardine living conditions oiled by lax bureaucracy. There needs to be stringent state oversight of private companies given the commercial task of accommodating asylum seekers and refugees. State appointed inspectors should have the right to make unannounced inspections of these places at any hour of the day and night.
the money in housing misery in this country is astounding
Vultures in the truest sense of the word. How anyone can be complicit in this and sleep comfortably at night is beyond me.
I worked in the housing/property sector a few years ago, and dealing with the desperation of people who were literally begging for a chance for a viewing in some shitty mouldy overpriced apartment was absolutely awful. The guilt and shame I felt going home in the evening was overwhelming, and truly bad for my mental health. Needless to say, I left the job as quickly as I could.
I can’t understand how people can tolerate treating fellow humans in this manner. The people in DP are among the most vulnerable in society. The very least we can afford them is dignity, but even that seems to be beyond some – including our own government.
Hardly a surprise given the government stages everything else.
you know they know they are in the the wrong when they measure the space by volume instead of area so 4000 cubic feet is 113m3 or about 11.3m3 per person which i guess is a space 2m high by 2m wide by 3m
Compliant? If that is compliant, the rules need changing.