Plan to accommodate Ukrainian refugees in former Offaly convent
THE former convent in Kilcormac could soon be used to accommodate people leaving Ukraine, a local councillor has said.
Cllr John Leahy said he has spoken to the owner of the building on Main Street about the plan to develop a refugee centre there.
A previous proposal to locate a residential addiction rehabilitation centre in the former Convent of Mercy fell when An Bord Pleanala refused to grant permission to the developer, Serenity Home Ltd.
In August 2021 Offaly County Council had given the go-ahead for a 13-bedroom facility with counselling rooms and other ancillary accommodation.
That decision was appealed by a group called Concerned Residents of Kilcormac and in May last year An Bord Pleanala overturned the planning consent, saying the proposed rehabilitation centre would have a serious and detrimental impact on the interior of the convent, which is a protected structure.
For more than a year the building has been home to a bicycle maintenance and manufacturing training centre run by the Bicycle Engineering Academy but it will soon be moving its activities to another centre it has in Portlaoise.
Cllr Leahy said this evening (Wednesday, January 18) that he had told the objectors to the rehabilitation unit that if they succeeded in blocking the rehabilitation centre, the convent might instead be used to house asylum seekers or refugees.
“I pleaded with these people on a couple of occasions and I said the alternative for a convent sitting in the middle of a town was going to maybe bring about an asylum seeker or refugee centre. Either that or it's going to fall to the ground,” he said.
“I personally put a lot of time into trying to get the bicycle hub into it, in which we succeeded.”
The Independent councillor said he could understand why private businesspeople would look at other options when “there's a market there at the moment”.
He said he believed an opportunity had been wasted because the rehabilitation centre would have created between eight and 12 jobs locally.
“I can't see that being the case now and unfortunately the convent, be it right or wrong, is going to be forever and a day now, until it's sold on again, some sort of Ukrainian centre or refugee centre or homeless shelter.”
The councillor added that when he told the Concerned Residents of Kilcormac that the convent could be turned into a refugee centre they told him “they would fight that as well”.
He said: “What I'm doing is I'm calling them out now and asking them to do what they said they would do at the start and for them to take the campaign on. I personally am not because at the end of the day, number one it's a private enterprise, and another thing is I'm not going to publicly come out and stop people coming from a war stricken country coming into this country.
“If they're so concerned about Kilcormac they need to come to the fore now because they're the ones that started this. I as a public representative would not stand for a protest.”
According to the latest figures from the Central Statistics Office, 553 people arrived from Ukraine to Offaly by November 6 last.
The figure is based on PPSN applications and comprises 386 in the Tullamore Electoral Area, 105 in the Birr Electoral Area and 62 in the Edenderry Electoral Area.
The national total was 62,425.
Questions put this afternoon to the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, which has responsibility for accommodating refugees, were not answered by this evening.