‘We’re not anti-immigrant, we’re welcoming – but our schools & surgeries are full up’: Ireland’s migrant crisis explodes
Rocketing immigration, on top of a housing crisis, has created a perfect political storm in Ireland
ROLLING off car ferries at Rosslare Harbour, travellers pass a sign bearing Ireland’s traditional greeting of “a hundred thousand welcomes”.
Yet as the Republic struggles to cope with an unprecedented influx of migrants, this genial nation’s south east coast gateway has had its famous hospitality severely tested.
Driving past the Great Southern Hotel, being renovated close to the harbour, unofficial placards tell of the village being “at saturation”.
Residents in this tiny community of just 2,000 have already welcomed three hotels full of asylum seekers, and claim the number of Ukrainian refugees living here is close to 400.
But when the Irish government revealed plans to house migrants in a fourth venue earmarked for a nursing home, locals dug their heels in.
Master mariner Sean Boyce, 40, told me: “We are a hugely welcoming community, but our nearest doctors is in Tagoat, over three miles away, and it’s full.
“Our school is at capacity, plus we would rather the hotel became a nursing home because that would provide the jobs this community really needs.”
Dad-of-two Sean is no racist of the sort who made global headlines in an anti-immigration riot in Dublin last month.
He founded Rosslare Harbour Friends of Ukraine and helped raise more than £100,000 for around 5,000 refugees who arrived in the port after Russia invaded their homeland.
“We don’t want to be attached to a far-right, anti-immigration narrative,” Sean added. “We aren’t that.”
‘The inn is full’
Locals have mounted a 24/7 picket outside the Great Southern since November and organised dozens-strong protest marches.
Huddled around braziers against the Atlantic chill, a group of locals brandished placards reading, “We can not take any more” and “3 centers is enough in our village”.
Mum-of-three Niamh Dennis, 39, points out there is “no community centre, no medical centre, no community creche and no youth club” to cater for more refugees.
Payroll clerk Jelena Stefanova, 45, originally from Riga, Latvia, is worried locals will soon be outnumbered by migrants.
From the picket line, the mum-of-one said: “I came here almost 20 years ago and the place was lovely.
“If so many more asylum seekers come here, I won’t let my child go crab fishing miles away on his own. It wouldn’t feel safe.”
Rocketing immigration, on top of a housing crisis, has created a perfect political storm in Ireland.
It received a record number of asylum claims — 13,651 — in 2022, up 186 per cent on 2019.
Almost half came from Georgia, Algeria or Somalia.
This week, Ireland’s Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin blamed Britain’s Rwanda policy for driving more asylum seekers to Ireland.
Some 100,000 Ukrainian refugees have also been taken in — six times more per head of population than in Britain.
And with unemployment hovering just below five per cent, the Republic also handed out almost 40,000 work permits last year — more than double the previous peak in 2019.
Most went to Indian, Brazilian and Filipino workers in health and social work.
Figures from its 2021 census show 20 per cent of Irish residents were born abroad, compared to 14 per cent in the UK. It means more than a million of Ireland’s 5.1million people are immigrants.
The soaring population — up by 98,000 in the year to April — comes as the Irish government admits there is a shortage of 250,000 homes across the Republic.
This land of a thousand welcomes now has a new slogan, controversially used by some — #IrelandIsFull.
Protests have erupted outside asylum accommodation, with some people taking matters into their own hands.
Last Saturday, the disused Ross Lake House Hotel in Rosscahill, County Galway — due to take in 70 asylum seekers in a remote community of 300 — was set on fire.
As a land that has sent millions to start new lives in the UK, the US and Australia, talk of curbing immigration has often been taboo. That notion is now shattered.
Local councillor Noel Thomas said that while he did not condone the Galway blaze, he believes Ireland should stop accepting asylum seekers because “the inn is full”.
Meanwhile, Peter Casey — who finished second in the 2018 Irish presidential election — insisted tighter immigration controls were needed as “open borders” were “totally destroying Irish culture”.
The former Dragons’ Den panellist said of freedom of movement this week: “I’d put a ban on everyone coming in from the EU for a period of time.”
Prime Minister Leo Varadkar called it a myth that Ireland had an “open borders” policy for refugees.
He insisted migration had been good for the country and that the “vast, vast majority” of migrants fill “huge skills gaps”.
The Galway blaze follows a string of other suspected arson attacks on migrant accommodation.
In County Cork in July, thugs in balaclavas reportedly torched a building due to house refugees in Ballincollig.
And in May, a makeshift migrant camp in Dublin went on fire, with tents and belongings destroyed.
On November 23, rioting broke out in Dublin after an Algerian-born Irish citizen allegedly stabbed three children and a care assistant who tried to shield them.
False rumours online claimed the attacker was an illegal immigrant who had targeted the kids in an Islamist terror attack.
Carnage ensued as a mob — some with banners proclaiming Irish Lives Matter — looted shops, torched buses and trams and attacked asylum accommodation.
Tensions were already high after a Slovakian immigrant was sentenced for the murder of primary school teacher Ashling Murphy, 23, who was stabbed 11 times in January 2022 while jogging in her home town of Tullamore.
On November 30, a suspected molotov cocktail was lobbed at the Great Southern Hotel site and a forklift teleporter was burnt out.
There is no suggestion that the protesters were responsible and organisers said they were “aghast”.
Over the past two years, immigration has surged to become the third most important issue among Irish voters.
Some 28 per cent of respondents in an Ireland Thinks poll said they would consider backing a candidate or party with “strong anti-immigration views” — double the 2021 level.
Among those hoping to capitalise on Dublin’s migrant crisis is the fringe, far-Right Irish Freedom Party, which campaigns under the “Ireland is full” slogan and wants to quit the EU.
I met its burly leader Hermann Kelly in Drogheda, north of Dublin.
Kelly worked as a Director of Communications for the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy group – whose president was UKIP’s Nigel Farage – at the European Parliament.
Farage once that Kelly also “doubled as security” for him.
Kelly concedes that when Farage needed someone to look after him, he was “a big, strong boy”.
Critics of the “Ireland is full” mantra point out the island had a million more people in 1841, at its population peak.
But Kelly said: “Are people suggesting we go back to eating potatoes, with 20 people per cabin?
“The hospitals are full, the schools are full and there’s a massive housing crisis.”
The party, which has 950 members, according to Kelly, will field three candidates at next year’s European polls, when it hopes to harness anti-immigration sentiment.
Kelly denies suggestions his party, founded in 2018, is far right — calling it “socially conservative and economically liberal”.
I ask him if its rhetoric has contributed to the recent riot and arson attacks. “Not at all,” says the Louth resident. “I grew up in the North during the Troubles, I’m very against political violence.”
An hour south of Drogheda, PM Varadkar welcomed 6,000 new Irish citizens at Dublin’s Convention Centre this week.
Just over 13,500 people from 131 countries, living in every Irish county, got citizenship this year.
Software engineer Bhumika Singh, 33, was delighted to become an Irishwoman after nine years living there. From Lucknow, India, she was dismayed by November’s riot.
The pregnant mum of one, 33, said: “I was terrified. I didn’t think something like that could happen in Ireland.”
Asked if she had experienced racism, Bhumika revealed: “Someone in the street called me a ‘bloody P***’.”
However, she still thinks Ireland is “a very welcoming country”, where she wants to raise her kids.
Razan Faisal, 30, originally from Sudan and now a doctor in Waterford, said: “I came to Ireland to work.
It’s a great country with nice people.” As for the rioting thugs, she added: “They represent themselves, not Ireland.”
Nurse Abbie Lebranchu, 32, originally from the Philippines and now living in a Dublin suburb, says the only real difficulty she faced was finding a home to buy.
At the Rosslare Harbour picket line, Sean said: “The rate of change is so quick people find that very hard to absorb.”
These are the sort of folk politicians will be wary of ignoring as Ireland grapples with mass migration to its shores.
