Local councillor Brendan Fay has asked Cavan County Council to write to the Minister for Integration and request that his Department provide more information about proposed accommodation for refugees in the area. Cllr Fay says the Department has recently set up a "community engagement team" who is tasked with providing information to local communities where asylum seekers fleeing the war in the Ukraine and other countries may be housed.
He has asked that this new engagement team prepare official information from the Government that would properly inform people in Cavan of their plans, if any, to house asylum seekers in the county. The Belturbet councillor said he has been inundated with queries from his constituents who want to know if the government plan to accommodate more refugees in Cavan, if there are school places for their children and if there will be more GPs assigned to the area?
Cllr Fay also says information from the government would eliminate the false information being disseminated on social media. "The request was that Roderic O'Gorman's office, the minister, would send down somebody from the community engagement team, come down themselves to meet with a delegation from Cavan County Council to meet with people of the area to let us know what is happening," Councillor Fay told Northern Sound, "People don't mind, people are happy to help but, when all this social media kicks in and it fuels all the misinformation and that's what happens in communities."
