Tag Archives: Direct Provision Centre

RESIDENTS of a Clare Direct Provision centre have been moved to Dublin following the detection of cases of Covid-19. All 36 residents have left Clare Lodge in Ennis after some of them tested positive. They have been brought to the capital where they will be accommodated in individual rooms to prevent the spread of Covid-19. According to a source, some staff members have also contracted the virus. Co-ordinator of the Clare Immigrant Support Centre Orla Ní Éilí told The Champion she is aware of the movement of the residents from the centre run by Bridgestock Care Ltd and believes this was the “correct practice” to ensure people’s safety. She said the decision to remove the residents from the centre was taken in the interests of public health. “It was decided for everybody’s sake to move everyone to a designated centre in Dublin where people will have their own rooms for the couple of weeks to get over Covid if they …

NO health and safety issues were identified during an unannounced visit by a senior official from the Department of Justice and Equality to the Direct Provision centre in Miltown Malbay last week, it has been revealed. “I am advised that there was no evidence of any rodent activity or water leaking on the day my official visited,” Minister for Justice and Equality Charlie Flanagan stated in briefing note seen by The Clare Champion. Mr Flanagan commissioned the report following concerns raised in correspondence and Parliamentary Questions relating to the emergency accommodation premises for international protection applicants at the Central Hostel in Miltown Malbay. Hostel owner Pat Kelly did not wish to make any comment but said to contact the Department of Justice on the issue. Last Thursday (June 4), officials from the International Protection Accommodation Service (IPAS) held a clinic via video call with residents of the centre, which was attended by 12 of the 19 residents. The clinic was …

A MOTHER of three, living in a Direct Provision Centre on the border of Clare and Limerick, has been awarded the 2017 Clare Woman of the Year award by the Soroptimist International Ennis and District Club. Donnah Vuma, who is from Zimbabwe, has lived in Knockalisheen with her young family for more than three years, while she waits for her asylum application to be processed. In the centre, there are over 200 people, including families and single men. In 2009, a report by the University of Limerick’s Centre for Peace and Development Studies deemed the centre only suitable as a short-term solution. However, nearly 10 years later, 226 people continue to reside there. Donnah had hoped for a better future when she arrived in Ireland but, instead, found that she was unable to work. Rather than succumb to the very difficult economic and institutional life in the centre, with no freedom or choice over food choices or meal times, Donnah has …

DONNAH Vuma has been living in the Knockalisheen Direct Provision Centre, Meelick since September 2014 and is nearing her third Christmas at the facility, which houses approximately 300 asylum seekers. The Zimbabwean woman lives there with her three children, aged 12, eight and six. The two youngest children attend Meelick National School, while the oldest is in first year at secondary school in Limerick. Donnah is not looking forward to Christmas. In fact, December 25 is one of her least enjoyable days. “I’d say it’s gloomier than any other day. Personally, there is nothing that I get the children. I don’t want to lie. For the two Christmases I’ve been here, I haven’t got them anything at all. But the centre does give them a Christmas present to the value of €50. They give them a catalogue to pick out something they want and they give them that on Christmas Day, with a box of chocolates. I can’t afford to …