Ireland will offer migrant families up to €10,000 if they drop their asylum claims.
The country is experiencing a chronic housing shortage and the payment is aimed at easing the pressure on the asylum seeker system.
Under the voluntary return programme, asylum seekers receive financial support to return home if they don’t have permission to stay in Ireland.
The government intends to increase the amount to €2,500 per person and a maximum of €10,000 per family.
In the UK, migrants without permission to stay are offered up to £3,000 to leave.
The increased voluntary grant will apply to those who sought asylum in Ireland before September 28 and to those waiting for a ruling on their status.
Opponents from the Social Democrats party claimed the scheme was a ‘right-wing dog whistle dressed up as efficiency’.
But Taoiseach Micheál Martin hit back at the criticism, which he claimed was ‘excessive, extreme language’ and ‘misplaced’.
Ireland will offer migrant families up to €10,000 if they drop their asylum claims as it battles a chronic housing crisis
He said it ‘made sense’ to create a system which encouraged people who were likely to be rejected asylum status to leave.
‘If people are seeking asylum, and in their heart of hearts know that they are not going to receive it, it could be economic migrants or whatever, the idea of giving people a helping hand to return or to be integrated to where they return to makes sense to me, both for the individuals concerned, but also for the broader system here in terms of the cost,’ he said.
Processing an asylum claim costs the government about €122,000 per person.
Anti-migrant sentiment has spread across Ireland in recent years with thousands joining rallies in May and June amid anger at the government over an increase in arrivals and asylum claims.
Many asylum seekers are unable to get accommodation, forcing them to sleep in tents.
Latest figures show that 1,159 people had dropped their claims and left Ireland by the middle of September this year under the previous less generous payment scheme – a 129 per cent increase on the same period last year.
Last year there were a record 18,560 asylum claims in Ireland, with around 30 per cent of those were granted.
As many as 150,000 people moved to Ireland in 2023-24, Central Statistics Office (CSO) figures revealed, the highest number in 17 years.
Anti-migrant sentiment has spread across Ireland in recent years with thousands joining rallies in May and June amid anger at the government
Many of them are being accommodated in poor areas of central Dublin or small provincial towns. Only 30,000 of these were returning Irish citizens.
There are now nearly around 33,000 international protection applicants being housed across the nation, up from 7,244 in 2017.
Alongside arrivals from Africa and the Middle East, 100,000 refugees flocked to the country following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Each costs the nation nearly £70 a day, a figure that has increased by a third in two years. At the end of last year the Irish Refugee Council revealed there were a record 3,001 asylum seekers homeless in Ireland.