Special council meeting due on bid to block Athlone refugee project

At the time of writing, a special meeting of the Athlone Moate Municipal District is scheduled to take place tomorrow (Wednesday) morning as part of an effort by local councillors to block plans for a temporary accommodation facility for 1,000 male asylum seekers in the town.

Notification of the special meeting of the local authority was sent out on Friday afternoon last, with the meeting scheduled for a 9am start tomorrow in Athlone Civic Centre.

The sole item on the agenda for the meeting is: "To consider issuing an Order under Section 31 of the Local Government (Sanitary Services) Act 1948 to prohibit the erection or retention of temporary dwellings on lands at Lissywollen, Athlone."

This refers to a legal provision which the nine members of the Municipal District are seeking to deploy in order to halt construction work on the preparation of the 1,000-person facility at the site of the existing direct provision accommodation centre in Lissywollen.

Over recent days, there has been some back-and-forth communication between the Municipal District and the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth in relation to the matter.

As we reported last week, the Minister at this Department, Roderic O'Gorman, wrote to the local councillors saying he wished to ensure their concerns in relation to the project were "fully aired and reconciled".

The Minister asked for "further engagement and dialogue" to take place between officials of his Department, and the councillors and council officials in Athlone, before any vote on the proposed Section 31 order seeking to block the project.

It's understood that the councillors wrote back to the Minister saying they were willing to engage with the Department in order to find a resolution, but that they wanted the work on site in Lissywollen to stop in the meantime.

The Department indicated, however, that work on site would not be stopping, and so the decision was then taken late last week to call the special meeting of the Municipal District for this Wednesday morning.

In advance of the Bank Holiday weekend, the local councillors are understood to have offered Department representatives an opportunity to meet with them today (Tuesday) and, over the weekend, the Department said they would take up this offer.

As a result, a behind-closed-doors meeting in Athlone between the local councillors and officials from Minister O'Gorman's Department is, at the time of writing, planned for this afternoon.

In recent weeks, Athlone-area councillors have indicated their strong opposition to the refugee accommodation project, and criticised the lack of consultation from the Department before an order was issued to start work on the project.

"This lack of consultation is disgraceful and an insult to the role of local government," said the councillors in a joint statement read out by Athlone Mayor Cllr Frankie Keena recently.