Children​ whose family are seeking asyl​um in Ireland at a Direct Pro​vision Centre established by t​he Irish Government to house a​nd care for refugees. Howard Davies/Report Digital-REA/Redux

The largest contract holder, Mosney Holidays, PLC—an Irish company—was paid $10.8 million last year to run a center for 600 asylum seekers. Mosney is followed by East Coast Catering, a Canadian food and housing provider that contracts primarily for work camps in oil and gas, mining, and industrial construction sites in Ireland and Canada. The fourth largest contract holder in Ireland is a subsidiary of Aramark, the $10 billion American company that has catering contracts with more than 500 U.S. prisons. In contrast to its American prison contracts, however, Aramark operates and fully administers three of the state-owned Irish direct provision centers, including Knockalisheen, the contract for the three centers amounting to $6.8 million in 2018. That means catering the food, hiring all center care staff, providing managerial oversight, and handling all day-to-day operation of each center. Aramark first acquired the contract for the three centers and care of nearly 800 asylum seekers in 2005, transferring all contracts to a subsidiary called Campbell Catering, Ltd. in 2018. Most companies with contracts were recruited by the Irish government to repurpose their properties into direct provision centers.

The lower the center’s operational cost, the higher the profit; the more bodies in a center, the higher the contract value. The incentives, those living in direct provision say, produce grim results.

In theory, designated canteens at all but one self-catered center supply three fixed meals a day on a 28-day menu rotation, with attention paid to any cultural or religious dietary needs. But at Knockalisheen, Mfaco said the 28-day rotation is more like a two-day sequence that the cooks supplement with a few drab additions. “You just have to shove it down your throat,” he told me. He desperately wants to be able to cook for himself—a hamburger, or lasagna maybe—but in Knockalisheen, like in most centers, residents do not have access to the kitchen. Ruth, who has been in the system for over four years after paying smugglers to spirit her out of Mugabe-era Zimbabwe and leaving a little sister behind, said she regularly goes hungry rather than eat the canteen food. “That’s how bad it is,” she said.

In 2015, after 30 inmates fell ill and after 19 months of complaints about maggot and rat contamination, Michigan terminated its contract with Aramark.

Mfaco’s and Ruth’s experiences of Aramark food echo reports from the United States. In March 2015, the Michigan Department of Corrections confirmed that Aramark had served inmates food previously thrown in the trash at the Saginaw Correctional Facility. On multiple occasions prisoners complained of maggots and mold in the food at Michigan and Ohio correctional facilities. In 2015, after 30 inmates fell ill from contaminated food and 19 months of complaints about maggots and rat-nibbled food, Michigan terminated its contract with Aramark and fined the company $98,000 for food shortages among other problems. Ohio fined Aramark more than $272,300 for violating the state’s standards for food at seven prisons in 2014. Every year, Aramark continues to provide some 380 million meals in 500 prisons across the United States, part of a correctional system in which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports inmates are 6.4 times more likely to suffer foodborne illness than those in the general population. Many state prison systems contract out to private service companies like Aramark and pay them a flat rate per meal—an arrangement that eases the state’s financial burden, but leaves those in its care at the mercy of the free market, vulnerable to inadequate oversight and pressure to produce a profit.