More than one in five tourist beds in counties Clare, Meath and Mayo, is being used by a refugee or asylum seeker.
That’s according to a report from Failte Ireland which warns ‘displaced bed stock’ could be costing tourism as much as a billion euro.
Nationally the number of registered Bord Failte beds under contract to the government is down since the summer, but it warns this ‘understates’ the real impact, as it doesn’t include unregistered sites like former hotels, unregistered B&Bs and re-purposed accommodation centres, which brings the estimate of revenue lost annually to 1.1 billion euro.
Clare is most affected with a-third of all registered tourist accommodation closed followed by Meath (26pc), Mayo (20pc), Wicklow (19pc) and Offaly (18pc).
10 percent of all tourist beds in Dublin are under contract to the Government and Kildare is least affected with only 2pc of tourist bed stock used to house refugees and asylum seekers.
