The Irish government has banned retirement homes in the country from becoming migrant accommodation after a conservative publication published an exposé of the practice.
Ireland’s pro-open borders government has finally banned the practice of retirement homes being closed and turned into migrant housing, a report on Sunday has announced.
It comes after a small conservative publication in the country published an exposé into the practice, with the outlet claiming that at least four nursing homes that recently shuttered are now operating as places for the government to house migrants.
According to a report by the Irish Independent, the Irish government has now banned the practice of nursing home operators turning their locations into migrant accommodation after the country’s Minister for Older People, Mary Butler, is said to have raised concerns surrounding the practice.
In a statement on the rule change, Ireland’s Department of Health reportedly said that “any facility that operates or operated as a nursing home” on or after September 1 this year will be banned from being repurposed.
The government ban on nursing homes being used to house migrants comes shortly after an exposé last week revealed that a number of nursing homes that were recently closed in Ireland are now being used to house migrants.
According to the report published by conservative outlet The Burkean, at least four recently shuttered nursing homes in the country are now actively being used to house migrants, with the publication giving a lack of public funding for nursing homes as a possible reason that so many are making the transition to housing refugees.
“This practice of converting nursing homes into asylum centres wasn’t a secret, but the scale of the phenomenon was deliberately ignored,” a spokesman for The Burkean told Breitbart Europe, before saying that, at the time of the original article’s release “one of the major parties and nobody in the media was willing to broach the topic”.
“Ireland has a culture of silence for anything that challenges mass immigration,” they went on to say, before emphasising that they aimed to continue their investigation into the phenomenon.
While major mainstream outlets in the country do appear to have largely left the issue of nursing outlets alone, things appear now to have shifted slightly.
For example, the Irish Independent has since confirmed that the government ministers were actively lobbied over the last number of months by individuals involved with businesses looking to turn their nursing homes into migrant housing.
One individual is said to have written to Ireland’s Department of Equality complaining about the difficulty they were having turning their facility, a former nursing home that closed in February, into migrant housing.
“It is unconscionable that a facility that is ready to accommodate up to 60 Ukrainian refugees is ready to go for the past number of weeks and it is being held up by red tape on the minister’s desk,” the individual reportedly said. “[T]he media would have a field day.”
Meanwhile, Peter Burke, a junior minister within the ruling coalition government, is said to have contacted Butler to make “representations” on behalf of a nursing home that reportedly closed back in July.
“They have been trying to get information on the possibility of reopening as emergency accommodation to house Ukrainian refugees,” the junior minister said. “However, they now believe the nursing home must be vacant for six months before this is possible.”
“I would appreciate if you could explain the rationale behind the requirement to remain vacant for six months when there is such a dire need for accommodation, if indeed that’s the case,” he went on to say.
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