International Protection Bill 2026: Committee Stage Dail Éireann — 2026-02-18 ============================================================ Alan Kelly (LAB), Tipperary North Thanks. This has never happened in my career here. There was a lot of fear in the community, and in the community at that time, there were people who were willing to block access to the Riverside apartments, because they did not want people coming. Swing on to 2024, when these people who had been moved into the apartments were being forced out of the apartments, again because it was run privately and there was a profit motive for moving them. The same people who blocked the apartments five years previously were willing to pull their machinery outside the apartments to keep them in. That was the social impact of those people moving to that area from various parts of the world. That was the impact they had on the school. That was the impact they had in the community. That was the impact they had on Borrisokane GAA. To see those young children running up the street for training on a Tuesday or Thursday evening, to see them in the Borrisokane gear, to see them winning awards and medals playing GAA and contributing in so many different ways was so heartening and refreshing. Then, you have a situation whereby we have a significant population coming into a town like Roscrea. In a town like Roscrea where there are social issues, a deprivation index you would look at and all of that, for a Government Department - the Department of justice - to take out the only hotel in the town, Racket Hall, the only place where people could have social gatherings, was absolutely stupid, idiotic and crazy. It was so bloody stupid that it is beyond comprehension how anyone - a Government or officials - could do that. There is that dichotomy between Borrisokane and Roscrea - both great places, fantastic places. Looking at what happened in Roscrea - talk about elevated levels of stupidity - to get representatives, particularly Fianna Fáil representatives, through an election they gave out €150,000 to do a feasibility study of an old hotel that has been closed a decade and does not have a hope in hell of being viable as a hotel into the future. A total of €150,000 of taxpayers' money was just flipped over the shoulder, gone, a waste of time. Tipperary County Council came out in the past week and said it is not buying it or doing anything with it. The Government is not doing anything with it. Many officials in several Departments have laughed and scoffed at this idea. I was previously a manager in Fáilte Ireland. It laughed at this. It is not viable. If it was not viable ten years ago, it is not viable for that purpose any more. It might be viable for something else because it is on a great street in the middle of Roscrea, but not for that. What sort of stupidity was that? When you come to the decision around community assessment, community assessment has to be done. However, you have to work with people in a way that is reasonable. You have to work with people in the manner in which it happened in Borrisokane. You do not do what I have outlined happening in Roscrea. You do not elevate the decision by trying to right an obvious wrong. The Government has now made the decision that it will not take out the final social gathering places and hotels. They are disembarking from hotels across the country, which I believe to be the right thing to do. It is absolutely the right thing to do. I put it to the Minister that when it comes to community engagement, there has to be a competency level within his Department that is increased way beyond what has ever happened in the past. It has been absolutely horrendous. The volume of the waste of money has also been horrendous. The model is broken. The Minister might be doing his best to change the model but the model has to be changed to deal with this, and that will only be through public investment. The Minister cannot do it any other way. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-02-18/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:39+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-02-18