Elected members of Mayo County Council unanimously adopted a motion for the September meeting of the local authority calling on both the Chief Executive – Kevin Kelly and the Director of Services- Tom Gilligan to explain why Mayo is accommodating significantly more international protection and Ukrainain refugees than the country’s capital or the neighbouring counties of Galway and Roscommon
The number of refugees and asylum seekers in Mayo at present accounts for 3.4% of the county’s population, compared to a national average of 2.1%. These figures were presented to the meeting by Westport based Fine Gael councillor Peter Flynn.
The councillor claims that Dublin is at 1.4% and so proportionately it needs to accommodate 50,000 refugees/asylum seekers to get to the same percentage as Mayo.
He says over 30% of the tourist accommodation in Mayo has changed to the provision of refugee accommodation without any supports from Government and is critical of the standard of some of the locations where some refugees/asylum seekers are now residing.
Neither at government or local authority level, is there any strategy around the crisis, councillor Flynn claims, and argues that as a result “opportunist and speculators are driving the choice of locations around the country, while making big profits on the backs of misfortunate refugees”.
Councillor Flynn has been speaking to Midwest News Editor Teresa O’Malley….
