Just days after a homeless Polish man was crushed to
death in a bin he was sleeping in, it has emerged the number of
destitute people from EU accession states seeking help to return home is
on the increase.
The number using a Department
of Justice-funded repatriation scheme had declined significantly every
year since the recession began.
However, the
number of people being repatriated because they are destitute has begun
to increase for the first time since 2007.
In the first five months of this year 153
foreign nationals were flown back to their countries of origin after
seeking help from the Reception and Integration Agency to go home on destitution grounds.
That compares to 97 in the same period last year and 213 in all of last year.
If the trend to the end of May continues, about 370 will have availed of the scheme by the end of the year.
The
increase in the first five months of the year – the most recent for
which figures are available – is seen as significant because it is the
first growth seen since 2007.
Fr Peter McVerry,
who campaigns for the homeless, said it was difficult to know why the
number of destitute foreign nationals was increasing at this time.
“They
may be at that last stage where they have hung on all they can but now
they’re really looking at a period of homelessness so they want to
leave,” he said.
No stability
No stability
Homeless services were “especially poor” for foreign nationals compared to Irish homeless people, he said. “The Irish can get a bed for six months in a hostel and it brings them at least some stability. But the non-Irish can only get a hostel bed for one night at a time.”
He said services were allocated in that way to make it unattractive for foreign homeless people to stay in Ireland. This repatriation scheme is open only to those from the 12 EU accession states that joined between 2004 and 2007.
It is for those who came to Ireland to work, but after arriving may have become homeless or be in extreme hardship.
The
State pays to put them in a hostel for one or two nights and gives them
a ticket for a flight home the following day.
It is a voluntary
repatriation programme and is in no way linked to deportations.
In decline
In decline
The scheme began in 2004 and numbers peaked at 757 in 2008. Since then there has been a decline in numbers every year to 416 in 2011 and to 213 last year.
Romanians accounted for 112 of the 213.
They were followed
by: Poles (31 people), Slovakians (17), Latvians (15) and those from the
Czech Republic (15) among other places.