The Government has paid “inflated prices” for asylum-seeker housing in the past number of years, the Justice Minister has admitted, writes Muiris Ó Cearbhaill.

Jim O’Callaghan told the Oireachtas Justice Committee yesterday that the State was “desperate” to find housing for people seeking asylum between 2022 and 2024.

Many of the contracts signed in that period did not require typical approvals and have since not stood up to scrutiny, he told TDs and senators.

Mr O’Callaghan said: “I’ve no doubt, with the inflated numbers, probably inflated prices were paid.”

The Fianna Fáil minister spoke to members of the committee about the International Protection Accommodation Services (IPAS) for the first time yesterday.

Ireland saw 159,000 people migrate here between 2022 and 2024, which “created a crisis”, he said.

It also put the State in a “very weak negotiating position” with commercial asylum centre providers, he added.

Responsibility for IPAS was transferred from the now-defunct Department of Integration to the Department of Justice and Migration earlier this year.

Mr O’Callaghan said that since his department took up the role, no new IPAS centres have been created and 100 contracts have been renegotiated.

He commended the former integration minister, Green TD Roderic O’Gorman, who oversaw the scheme at the time.

When it was put to him that the desperation from the State led to profiteering from commercial providers, Mr O’Callaghan conceded higher prices were probably paid.

He said: “Because of the numbers coming in – we saw 45,000 international protection applicants coming in – necessarily, those people are going to result in people making profits.

“Commercial providers are in the business to make profit.

“We didn’t have the accommodation for those 45,000 people.

“I’ve no doubt, with the inflated numbers, probably inflated prices were paid. But even if we had the most efficient system... there would still be people who are going to make money on this.

“You can’t get away from that, even if I did introduce all the efficiencies that we wanted to.”

Spending on asylum centres inflated to €1.2bn in recent years, a figure Mr O’Callaghan described as “eye-watering”.

The minister said the way to reduce this figure is to move towards ‘State-run’ accommodation facilities.

More than 4,000 State-owned beds have been added to the IPAS system in recent months, including at Citywest in Dublin.

Mr O’Callaghan said the upkeep for beds in the State-run system costs €12,000 each per year, but this jumps to €30,000 per year in the commercial sector.

Junior migration minister Colm Brophy told RTÉ Radio 1 yesterday that the department is also preparing a scheme whereby people who are working while living in IPAS centres will make contributions towards the cost of the accommodation.

He conceded, however, that the new scheme is not likely to make major reductions in costs.

Mr O’Callaghan told the committee that his department has renegotiated 100 contracts with providers, which has reduced the per-bed cost.

The department pays, on average, €71 per person, per night, for people living in commercially provided IPAS beds.

That figure has fallen from an average of €84 per person, per night, last year, the minister said. Mr O’Callaghan said it would be “commercially naïve” to provide more detail about the rates being paid.

The Dublin Bay South TD added that he would like to see the number of people applying for asylum fall to 10,000 in the coming years. Currently, the “overwhelming majority” of people are coming over the border, he said.

Roughly 87.66% of applicants have sought international protection at a government office, the committee was told, which the minister said suggests that people are not entering Ireland through ports or airports.

Mr O’Callaghan said he intends to speak with his new British counterpart, Shabana Mahmood, to address the issue.