Flynn asks county council for breakdown of refugee resettlement finances

A series of financial questions have been posed to Mayo County Council regarding the resettlement of Ukrainian and IPAS refugees in the county since March 2022.

Councillor Peter Flynn has a motion on the agenda for Monday's meeting of the local authority requesting a detailed breakdown of all income received or accrued from any government departments in relation to the resettlement of the refugees in Mayo.

He is asking that these details are set out in relation to each property where refugees have been housed and is also looking for relevant details of income received for salaries of officials involved and any other category of income.

In April, a parliamentary question posed by Michael Ring TD revealed that a total of €12,211,077.62 was paid to three accommodation providers in 2021 and 2022, according to figures released by the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth affairs.

In 2022, a Mayo property with an occupancy of 243 received €3,978.075.74 while a second with an occupancy of 61 received €409,920. A third, with an occupancy of 192, received €338,766.

According to latest figures from the Central Statistics Office 3,873 Ukrainian refugees are now living in County Mayo

The figures are based on the number of PPS numbers allocated to refugees arriving from Ukraine and do not accurately reflect the number of Ukrainians living in each electoral area.

A total of 1,134 Ukrainian refugees have moved into the Westport Municipal District since the start of the war, which makes up 5.74 percent of the Westport population – the fifth highest of any electoral area in the country.