The James Connolly Memorial Hospital will be home to one hundred Vietnamese refugees arriving in Ireland.
Units at the Blanchardstown hospital will be used to house the first 100 refugees arriving from Vietnam. Well wishers have already been to the site bringing donations of clothes and blankets to help the new arrivals settle into their new temporary home.
The Irish Red Cross have been working over the past few weeks to prepare living and sleeping accommodation for the people arriving from Vietnam. Where possible, units are being subdivided into areas allotted to families and curtain screens are being used to provide some privacy to groups.
Each unit has its own kitchen, bathroom and recreation room, and a dining room which will double as a classroom.
The resettlement of the Vietnamese refugees into life in Ireland will take some time. The admission of these people to Ireland has been arranged by the Department of Foreign Affairs through the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. Once they arrive in Ireland, the Department of Defence will assume responsibility for taking care of the refugees. A committee of government departments and semi-state bodies has also been established to meet the needs for training, employment, health and social welfare.
The first one hundred refugees from Vietnam will arrive in four days time. The government has committed to taking in two hundred refugees from Vietnam. They have not set an upper limit on the number that will actually be accepted. It is expected that the refugees will remain at Blanchardstown until the beginning of October at which stage they will be moved to the St Vincent de Paul house at Kerdiffstown just outside Naas.
After that, their resettlement here will be the responsibility of us all.
An RTÉ News report broadcast on 5 August 1979. The reporter is Conor Fennell.
