Over 110 tents were removed and destroyed from along the Grand Canal between McCartney Bridge and Leeson Street Bridge in Dublin 4 this morning.

It’s the third large tent encampment that has been removed in multi-agency style operations in Dublin City Centre in the past three weeks.

At the start of the month a makeshift migrant camp, which was situated in and around the International Protection Office on Mount Street, was removed.

The ‘tent city’ had been allowed to grow in the area over a couple of months, it’s estimated that there were almost 300 asylum seekers sleeping in 200 tents at the time the encampment was dismantled.

The asylum seekers who had been sleeping rough on Mount Street were taken by bus to alternative accommodation in Citywest and Crooksling.

A man looks on at asylum seeker tents on the Grand Canal today. Image: Sasko Lazarov/ © RollingNews.ie

However within days another ‘tent city’ popped up along the Grand Canal, not too far away from Mount Street and it was allowed to grow before it was removed.

But again, no sooner than those tents were removed and destroyed, more tents were pitched further up the canal.

That encampment grew over the past fortnight and before Dublin City Council officials and Gardai arrived at 7:30am this morning, it had grown to over 110 tents.

After only a few short hours of there being no migrant camps in and around the city centre, it comes as no surprise that 40 tents have popped up along the Grand Canal again this evening.

In the last two weeks, an average of 76 asylum seekers have been arriving in Ireland every day.

When single male asylum seekers arrive here they are told there is currently no State accommodation available and they are directed to homeless services in the city centre.

Members of the public pass tents belonging to asylum seekers along the Grand Canal. Photograph: Sasko Lazarov / © RollingNews.ie

The Department of Integration is funding these very homeless charities to hand out tents to international protection applicants, but over 500 of these tents (which are being funded by the Government) have been destroyed by the Government this month.

Yes, you read that correctly, the Irish Government is paying for tents for asylum seekers and then destroying them within a couple of weeks.

Each tent costs an average of €70 – that’s €35,000 flushed down the toilet in three weeks.And the Government seem intent on continuing to do this – the Taoiseach Simon Harris has said several times that he will not allow tent encampments to grow.

This morning along the Grand Canal I spoke to Brian, he’s an asylum seeker from South Africa, and he told me that tents will probably appear somewhere else in Dublin tonight:

“It’s not going to stop, there’s a lot of people coming here and there’s an accommodation crisis, so this is going to keep happening. There will be tents pitched somewhere else probably by tonight” - and he was right.

This whole situation is entirely predictable and migrant camps will continue to appear elsewhere. I’ve heard some people say that forcing asylum seekers to sleep in tents is acting as a deterrent: "No asylum seekers will come here if they know they’ll have to sleep rough".

Tents of refugees and asylum seekers are removed from Mount Street in Dublin city, 1-5-24. Image: Sasko Lazarov / © RollingNews.ie

However, this is deterring nobody from coming here as over 8,000 asylum seekers have come to Ireland this year and if the current trajectory continues over 25,000 people will apply for asylum in Ireland in 2024.

I wrote last year that there should be a temporary cap on asylum seekers coming here because the situation would get worse before it got better.

It has gotten worse, a lot worse – did anyone have it on their 2024 bingo card that migrant camps in the Irish capital would become the norm? Because that’s where we are currently at.

However I don’t think we have seen anything yet; I haven’t seen any evidence that the number of people applying for international protection is going to fall anytime soon, and I also cannot see the Government sourcing large-scale accommodation in the short-term.

Main image: Tents pitced along the Grand Canal today. Image: Sasko Lazarov/ © RollingNews.ie