International Protection Seanad Éireann — 2026-05-12 ============================================================ Sharon Keogan (IND), Industrial and Commercial Panel The Minister of State is very welcome. I welcome the opportunity to raise this Commencement matter, which relates to something that has emerged in recent days. It is deeply troubling and goes to the heart of transparency, housing policy and public trust. The issue today is simple: how many properties has the Department of justice acquired for international protection since 2020? Where are they? How many are in use? How many are sitting vacant and under refurbishment? The way this matter came to light should concern everyone in this House. Stamullen, County Meath, is a residential village that is already under intense housing pressure. Local residents there have discovered that a private house in a normal housing estate was purchased by the Department of justice for international protection accommodation in 2022. That discovery did not come through any formal notification, public engagement or planning process. It came about only because the residents decided to investigate the property after noting how long it had been vacant and suddenly seeing furniture delivery vans. They grew curious about who their new neighbours would be. I went into the local authority offices to confirm the facts. The housing officials were unaware of the ownership until they checked the land registry. That alone tells us that something is very wrong. It is deeply troubling on several levels. First, there was no consultation with the local community. There was no advance engagement with residents. There were no transparent communications with the local authority. Decisions of this scale were taken quietly and implemented without any regard for the basic principle that communities deserve to know what is happening in their own estates. Second, this appears to have been done with no consideration of local housing pressure. In Stamullen and the surrounding areas, families are waiting years for homes. Housing lists are long. Young people cannot stay in their own communities. The State is purchasing residential houses in housing estates, and sometimes leaving them vacant for years while local needs go unmet. That is not some kind of hypothetical concern. It is happening now. People are reasonable. Communities understand humanitarian obligations, but people must be consulted. Leaving communities in the dark and then surprising them with developments like this is precisely how trust is destroyed, and backlash is created. Transparency is not optional; it is essential if public policy is to function at all. What is particularly alarming is that this does not appear to be an isolated case. The Department has now acknowledged that it manages dozens of in-community properties nationwide. There appears to be no publicly accessible register, no clear planning framework and no mechanism for local authorities or elected representatives to understand where these properties are located and how decisions are made. This Commencement matter is not about blindly opposing international protection; it is about accountability, fairness and ensuring decisions are made transparently, lawfully and with regard to local realities. We need to begin a serious discussion about what mechanisms we can create going forward to ensure transparency and fairness. I hope the Minister of State's response can be a token of good faith to that end. I ask the Minister of State to set out the facts clearly for this House and the public. Without transparency, suspicions grow. Without consultation, trust collapses. Without proper governance, even well-intentioned policy becomes unsustainable. --- 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/seanad/2026-05-12/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:55+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-05-12