The government is to stop reimbursing homelessness charities for providing tents and sleeping bags to asylum seekers who cannot be accommodated by the state.
The Department of Equality has in recent months been paying non-government organisations (NGOs) to cover the costs of supporting homeless asylum seekers who have been forced to camp near the International Protection Office in Dublin.
Many of the tents have been pitched along the Grand Canal in Dublin as the state struggles to provide accommodation for the record numbers of asylum seekers who have been arriving in Ireland.
However, the tents are being destroyed days after they have been given out as part of a multi-agency operation to move asylum seekers on to state accommodation facilities such as Crooksling in the Dublin mountains.
The coalition plans to stop reimbursing NGOs for tents and sleeping bags once new accommodation opens on a state-owned site at Thornton Hall in north Dublin within the next four to six weeks, senior government sources confirmed this weekend.
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Micheál Martin, the tanaiste, recently said the provision of tents to homeless asylum seekers was “not a good idea”, describing the practice as fundamentally unsafe and also carrying risks around sanitation.
After the number of arrivals hit more than 600 a week earlier this month, there has been a fall in the number of weekly arrivals with fewer than 400 arriving last week, it is understood.
