One in four rooms for tourists are being filled by refugees in Ireland

38 comments
  1. Do we get a lot of tourists in autumn/winter anyway?

    Aside from people coming home for Christmas who usually stay with family: I feel like there isn’t much by way of tourism this time of year anyway.

  2. Sorry I can’t post the article text, but the figures are 13% (8,658) Ukrainian refugees, 10% (6,923) asylum seekers and 77% (52,365) others.

    Out of 67,944 total hotel, guesthouse and B&B rooms registered with Fáilte Ireland. Data as of October 4, 2022

  3. Shock horror. English newspaper in uproar because a quarter of rooms ment for travellers from a foreign land is being used by travellers from a foreign land that had to run from their homes because they were in danger of being killed

  4. By the way, OP deleted a comment in which he was whinging about how this affects his wedding of all things! How compassionate

  5. I don’t understand why this is a bad thing. The weather is getting worse, and refugees need help right now.

  6. We shouldn’t even have borders anyway. I’d happily become poor to know that I’m on equal par with immigrants fleeing from Putin’s war. It’s the least we can do to help the war effort. I say open the borders now and get as many them here to safety as fast as possible. I know so many people who have spare rooms they don’t use who could house any immigrant from anywhere in the world. We’re just all so selfish in the west and need to learn that we are the reason for most of the worlds problems right now. Only fascist bigots thing otherwise.

  7. >Katiuikha fled with her sons, Seva, 7, and Illia, 17, travelling through Romania before making their way to Ireland

    Hadn’t realised there was a war in Romania. Very sad news.

  8. It’s so cool that I’m paying for these hotel rooms through taxes while struggling to afford my rent. Nice one

  9. The safety of large groups of people who weren’t lucky enough to be born in the same country we were, is more important than your wedding. Sorry

  10. Better than kicking out irish people to accommodate refugees. Happened to a bunch of people i know, and me. The landlords either raised the rent to the point people cant afford it, so they have to leave (one of my friends is now forced to live in a mouldy cramped apartment with her 2 kids) and then refugees get the house. I bear no ill will to refugees, just the government and landlords thinking its right to kick out their people to get more money

  11. I don’t see the problem. We’re helping and most of them will go back to Ukraine when Russia loses.

  12. Hotels in Ireland will be moving towards seasonal opening anyway, it’s hardly worth it for them to exist in winter

  13. I mean we could just….. build more apartments instead of housing estates…..? Y’know, actually make things space efficient? 🙂

  14. 25% of our hotels and BnBs are for refugees. Seems like we should ban construction of hotels then and funnel all resources into building houses!

  15. This whole situation confuses me and fills me with mixed emotions.

    I am so proud of our country for stepping up and helping, we are all people and we ourselves have benefited from the charity of other countries in the past and may well need to in the future.

    It’s easy to turn your back and say don’t let them in when they’re just faceless statistics but having dealt with lots if refugees in work I couldn’t imagine condemning them to homelessness in cities that have effectively been turned into rubble, with the constant threat of having a bomb dropped on them.

    On the other hand we’re in the middle of a huge housing crisis with hundreds of thousands of Irish people being priced out of the housing market, demand is already outstripping supply ten fold.

    We have homelessness in every city and can barely facilitate caring for the people that are already here.

    I’m not saying turn them away but surely the government can pull their finger out and come up with better solutions, better than shoving them in hotels and pretending it’s not getting out of hand.

  16. Here’s an instant solution to help the situation – remove tax from Airbnb on rooms(not whole property rentals though). Encourage people to rent out their spare rooms that are otherwise unused.

  17. I can only thing the disgusting comments in here like “Good, I wish it was more” or “Great, tourists are annoying” or “The safety of people is more important than tourism or jobs” are people with the I got mine attitude.

    There’s millions of people suffering at any one time in the world, we can’t help them all.

  18. Good, not like we’ve any shortage of hospitality spaces. Also who comes on holiday to Ireland in October anyway, it’s freezing and miserable

  19. Why do they mean by ‘rooms for tourists’? Do they mean standard hotel rooms? What if I’m travelling on business, am I welcome to stay in one of these ‘rooms for tourists?’. What if I have pest control in the house getting rid of the local coun… I mean rats. Can I stay in one then, or would I have to go a few counties over so that I’m a tourist?

  20. Feeling a bit slighted on an authentic Irish experience. I rented three separate 4 bedroom airbnbs for a total of over six weeks this summer and not one of those rooms contained refugees.

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