Ireland running out of accommodation for Ukrainian refugees due to surge in non-Ukrainian refugees?

I won’t be going to East Wall or Ballymun. Because to do so would make me a hypocrite. I live a long way away. I never supported those communities before, so to do so now would not be right.

One thing that I do believe is that as One Eyed Jack said, stereotypes exist. If we look beyond the stereotype, whether that be a howarya from Ballymun, a refugee, a Ukrainian, they are people. And people are, when you get to know them, generally decent.

I was at my kid’s school play before Christmas and about 20 Ukrainian children in the school sang a Ukrainian Carol. It was the first time I had considered these 20 children spending their first Christmas away from home, in a strange land, with a war going on back home.

The local soccer coach is from west Africa, a really good man, who the kids love.

Once those children were just “Ukrainians”, the coach was just a “refugee” but when you get to know them they are just people, with worries and fears and hopes, the same as Mary from Ballymun or Tom from East Wall or You or me.

The protests have neither been successful, nor well supported, nor are they genuine grassroots phenomena. They’re the reasons for my statement, based upon actual events. They’re the same evidence based arguments as your own.

No, you are missing the point. It’s not that it took this community 30 years to stop a halting site being built. They stopped it FOR 30 years and then the authorities were forced to give up!

OK, never mind.

You say the protests haven't been successful. How would you define success?

No I got the point. It amounts to the same thing. It’s an exceptionally rare example of the local council trying to accommodate travellers in an affluent area. The vast majority of the time, travellers simply aren’t accommodated anywhere. Of the €18m allocated for traveller housing in 2022, only €6m has been spent by local authorities-

https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/housing-planning/2022/08/22/only-a-third-of-traveller-housing-budget-spent/

For anyone complaining about refugees being prioritised before Irish people and using homeless figures as an example, they’ll be the same people opposing to housing travellers anywhere too -

A 2018 report from the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission found Travellers to be 22 times more likely than any other group to be discriminated against in the private rental sector.

Data from 2018 for Dublin city and county recorded 504 homeless Travellers in emergency accommodation in October 2018, including 100 families with children – this represented 9% of all homeless families in Dublin.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40359824.html

I don't think any protestor went out with the aim of exonerating themselves in the eyes of some bigots.

I would define success in terms of the mainstreaming of the protestors ideas. And the wins keep coming.

Here's someone voicing our ideas who managed to get heard this week.

We need more appropriate and robust border controls.

It's important that asylum seekers should get “a decision in the negative” as quickly as possible.

There needs to be a determination to tighten up on people entering the country illegally. If people want to come here for economic reasons it's important that they follow the rules - it's not fair on other people if anyone's tried to get around those rules.

Here's another voice for the "Far Right"

The notion that Ireland is, or could become, a soft touch for uncontrolled economic migrancy posing as asylum seeking is a potent political weapon. Developed countries find it immensely difficult to deal with the volume of asylum-seeking arrivals in a manner and time frame that is both fair and effective. It is that inability which creates an opening for economic migrancy posing as asylum-seeking and for international trafficking of economic migrants.

Despite the terms of the Dublin III rules, would-be applicants for asylum in Ireland find little difficulty in transiting through the EU to seek asylum in Ireland.

40% of asylum seekers at Dublin Airport appear to have lost or destroyed their travel/identity documents between boarding a flight for Dublin and presenting at immigration control.

The number of genuine asylum-seekers from Georgia must be tiny. Destroying travel documents is designed to make the Irish international protection legal process longer and less effective.

International protection applications must be processed far more quickly. Destruction of air travel/identity documents must become a negative for applicants. Judicial review should be simplified and take a different form, perhaps, in lower-level summary immigration courts.

Recognise these Far Right extremists?

The first is Leo, last week

The second is Michael McDowell, last month.

The NP aren't a serious electoral force, nor, for the moment, are the Freedom Party. But the entryism of ideas? Continues apace.

I would define success in terms of the mainstreaming of the protestors ideas. And the wins keep coming.

…

The NP aren't a serious electoral force, nor, for the moment, are the Freedom Party. But the entryism of ideas? Continues apace.

Voicing your ideas? No they’re not. The only thing you’ve managed to demonstrate yet again is that you hear only what you want to hear. Leo is Leo, y’know, you just never know what he’s gonna come out with, his actions (or indeed lack thereof) are what matters, and as for McDowell, he already acknowledges that your ideas have gained very little traction in the publics mind -

The Tánaiste, Micheál Martin, recently spoke of the attempts by far-right groups to seek entry into our parliament by the back door, encouraging some members to adopt racial replacement rhetoric in their contributions to debates in the Oireachtas. And his observations have some substance, even if those contributions have gained relatively little traction in the public’s mind.

https://www.michaelmcdowell.ie/dangers-of-far-right-politics-exploiting-asylum-issues.html

All the protests are doing is making a bit of a show of some working class communities (what community wants to be associated with a bunch of Neanderthal bigots shouting slogans outside a refugee centre?). That's why we're seeing pushback in all of these communities against the actual protestors and people publicly stating they want nothing to do with them.

The population of Ballymun is 22,000. There were perhaps 200 people at that protest the other evening.

Given how slow and reluctant Irish people are to protest about anything it's not an insignificant number from a local community.

Same goes for the East Wall.

I'm surprised at the number of protests around the country and there is obviously a lot of frustration there.

The issues about school places, housing and healthcare are very real and they are widespread. Lots of tut tutting from the good people of Ireland, the comfortable pensioners, the 'nice people ' .

Throwing dozens of kids with no English into a local school doesn't raise standards at that school, it lowers them. The single biggest education metric is student :teacher ratio.

It does take away places from other kids. Many of us have had to deal with this reality. NO SCHOOL PLACES for your kid. Taxpayer? Irish citizens? TOUGH LUCK.

Then WTF am I paying taxes up to 50% for?

Same for healthcare/GP access. When you add patients to the roster others drop off.

They drop off!

GP will offer you an appointment two weeks later. Hopefully you are alive then.

Same for housing. Its limited. When somebody gets housing others dont get it. They dont get it! Simple as that.

One can be isolated from that if you live on Dublin southside where these are less refugee centres and send your kids to Terenure college or the local Gaelscoil and your brother in law is a doctor.

I'm not blaming genuine refugees on this. I blame the govenrment for not implementing policies which will lessen impact on citizens. For instance why can Ukranians in Ireland not run their own schools and medical centers in some towns?

They have the numbers, skills and people to do this.

We could be in an even bigger mess soon if the government doesn't start paying their bills

You have said that there was awareness that violence would be counterproductive.

How does chanting "get them out" fit in though. You were "get them out" at people who live there. Many people (including me) have described this as agressive and intimidating.

What do you think though?

That's incorrect. They are placing them in hotels and empty buildings in all areas. But the chances are the 3 star hotels are not located in premium residential areas. It's primarily working class areas that these far right agitators are targeting as they know they are less well eduacated and more liklely to believe the guff they are spreading.

There are quite a few Ukranians in Rathgar. Some are in BnB's there and some are in people's houses. I would say Rathgar is a rather opulent area. Similarly there are some in accommodation in Ballsbridge. Another opulent area. ButFar Right agitators would not be give one second of someone's time in these "upper class" areas as most people there are well educated and donlt take their news feed from tiktok.

Most Ukranians are being housed outside Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick & Waterford city areas - most "Irish" people in emergency accommodation are in Dublin (over 70%)

example - Eastern region - Adults in emergency accommodation - Dublin 5,356, Kildare 179, Meath 197, Wicklow 45.

The entire county of Roscommon has 8 adults in emergency accommodation.

When Children (those under 18) are included, Dublin is 7795.

So the "homeless issue is very much a Dublin issue. The entire county of cork is under 700 people.

Then lets look at the "look after our own" racist/xenophobic argument. 39% of those on the "homeless" list are not Irish. 22% are UK/EU and 17% are non-EU.

And if you cross reference it with the census, 18% are from the Traveller community who make up an extraordinary large number of the Dublin figures.

So if a representative sample of the "homeless" were put into the ESB building at east wall (300 people), 56 would be travellers, 66 would be UK/EU, 53 would be from outside the EU and 125 would be "White(washed) Irish".

Shows the stupidity of the argument the far right are using.

they're certainly smart enough not to stand outside places where emigrants are being housed shouting out out out. smart enough to know this is bottom of the barrel neanderthal behaviour that you do not want to be associated with whether you have a problem with housing emigrants or not.