Newbridge IPAS residents given just 24 hours to relocate from hotel

The Newbridge community has been left reeling after IPAS applicants staying in a Newbridge hotel were given just “24 hours notice” that they are to be relocated to other parts of the country.

137 residents of Eyre Powell Hotel, Newbridge, Kildare, have been informed by the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth that the premises must be vacated by Friday February 14 2025.

According to a letter circulated by the Department to residents, “this location will soon no longer be in a position to accommodate IPAS applicants.”

It is believed by sources the 137 residents and their families are to be relocated to IPAS centres in Dundalk and Tipperary.

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The letter, dated February 11, stated that residents would receive separate notice of the location to which they were to relocate, as well as a date when this would occur.

The Department said it wished to “re-iterate our apologies for the disruption that this will cause you but we will work to minimise it as much as possible.”

Orla O'Neill, Volunteer Co-ordinator with Newbridge For All, spoke of the upset the notification has caused the residents: “They're very upset, they're all very upset because they have studying, they had jobs, one of the local businesses has on social media that one of their employees had to give one day's notice because he's gone now.

“So it's affecting local businesses, there's children pulled out of schools, people in third-level, other people with jobs, lives, friends, all of that.”

Orla says all of the children staying at EyrePowell Hotel - which has operated for over 20 years in Newbridge - are attending local schools, and now face the upheaval of once again changing location.

She says: “The children's whole lives are being turned upside-down. Children in that centre will have had traumatic lives in the first place, they're seeking protection for a reason. So this would further traumatise them.

“They had safe spaces in school with friends and activities, and that's all just turned on its head, it's extremely problematic for parents trying to deal with that.”

Orla adds that the wider Newbridge community is in a state of disbelief. “At the very least”, she contends, IPAS applicants should have been granted a temporary stay by the Department while people became accustomed to the idea of moving location.

She concludes: “I think whatever the situation was, people should have been treated more humanely and given proper notice that they were going to have to move so that they weren't literally plucked out of their homes and sent some place new where they knew nobody and don't know what the situation is going to be like.

“They have no control over their lives whatsoever.”