1,000 people marching in Rosslare reflect rising anger at immigration policies

At the weekend 1,000 people marched in Rosslare in Wexford to oppose the imposition of another immigration centre, which seeks to accommodate 400 men, on an area which says it is already doing more than its fair share.

Around 1,000 people have taken part in a protest in Co Wexford against government plans for another centre to accommodate around 400 international protection applicants at the former Great Southern Hotel in Rosslarehttps://t.co/GYOgcFD8UN

— RTÉ News (@rtenews) November 18, 2023

In Killarney, hundreds more marched, expressing the same concern and anger that was seen at two packed public meetings in the town which heard that there are already around 3,000 migrants and refugees in the famed Kerry beauty spot.

I use the word imposition because that’s precisely what has been happening to small rural communities, and to less well-off Dublin areas, who suddenly find they are being told that they must accept large numbers of strangers being dumped into an empty building – and that their entirely valid concerns are brusquely dismissed by the authorities.

In fact, they’ve been accused by a veritable army of funded-to-the-hilt NGOs of being far-right and racist if they complain, and the government’s line has, to date, been that they won’t tell local communities who’s coming in case this might cause opposition. No point asking people for permission in case they say no, has been the thinking, as if it was an aberration to consider public opinion when making public policy.

The Gardaí were drafted in from time to time to make sure that pesky locals – like the polite ladies in Santry who were organising a 24/7 protest in opposing to a migrant centre – could be bulldozed aside if that were needed.

Between the accusations of NGOs and the occasional heavy-handedness, the establishment most likely imagined that while there would be some grumbling and some protesting, the Department of Integration would continue to do exactly what it liked.

Consider the astonishing response of a Department official to a government TD, Niamh Smyth, when local people in Castletara protested plans to open a migrant cente on a fomer stud farm.

Niamh Smyth TD paraphrased the official’s response to an Anglo Celt reporter as: “‘No, this is happening if it has not happened already, the bus is on its way and there’s nothing further to discuss here. I’ll send two officials to speak with you next week.’”

“I feel we have been blind-sided here and it’s a cruel way to treat a community in any part of the country, but particularly here where it is a very rural part,” she said.

“This is happening, if it has not happened already, the bus is on its way and there’s nothing further to discuss here”. That pretty much sums up the attitude of Roderic O’Gorman’s department towards the Irish people for the past 18 months or so, even as the housing crisis builds, and already stretched services are told to deal with further strain.

But they have ignored the rising anger of the Irish people for too long. 1,000 people marching in Rosslare feels like a sort of rebellion; a people provoked too far; a people tired of being Paddy last in their own country.

“Save our nursing home,” the banner in Rosslare said, in reference to the disgraceful decision to abandon plans for a much-needed nursing home on the site of the Great Southern hotel for yet another migrant centre, one sought by IPAS who do not house Ukrainian refugees but are packing accommodation spots around the country with people who come from places like Georgia and Nigeria or Algeria which are not war-torn countries.

But the banner, and the determination of the people in Rosslare who say the protests are continuing 24/7 and include a blockade of the ports and the site of the proposed centre, also says a lot more.

“We can’t take another IPAS centre,” [local woman] Niamh Dennis told RTÉ News. “We already have one IPAS centre. “Any hotel, any bed free in this village is already being used for the needs of refugees and what we need is a nursing home.

“We need a nursing home, somewhere for our elderly to go.”

That’s a powerful insight into the reality of what’s happening on the ground – and into the perception that the State is leaving its own people behind as it places the unmanageable strain of tens of thousands of newcomers onto already struggling areas.

Similarly, in Killarney a statement from those who marched in the rain said that “20 per cent of the population of Killarney town was now made up of refugees which was one of the highest intakes per capita in the country”.

“Our services have surpassed capacity and we cannot accommodate anymore. We are here today to say that we have done our fair share in welcoming people seeking refuge. “It’s our turn now to feel safe,” the statement added.

That’s a telling line. People want to feel safe, and at packed public meetings they are increasingly saying that the government’s immigration policy makes them feel unsafe. That’s not sustainable either.

There’s a feeling of a tipping point, of ordinary people not caring what the journalists sipping oat milk lattes in Terenure think anymore. Of real and visceral anger that, despite the obvious oppositon to the government’s disastrous immigration policy in the polls and elsewhere, local communities are effectively being browbeaten and bullied into accepting the by-now staggering numbers that have come to Ireland at the behest of our foolish, reckless and arrogant government.

That local anger has increasingly got direction and purpose. And they would do well to listen to what the supposed opposition, like Sinn Féin are saying on RTE where, perhaps, it might be believed local voters are less likely to be listening in.

This is David Cullinane, the Sinn Féin TD for Waterford, waffling on for a while about the government before saying he is “uncomfortable with protests of that nature generally”.  He was roundly criticised for the comment on X.

1,200 out of a population of 1,795 people in Rosslare protest 2nd Plantation centre in their village. The government want to increase the number of migrants in the village from 300 to eventually 800.
Sinn Fein's David Cullinane says he is "uncomfortable with protests of that… pic.twitter.com/rSnUKmcGMT

— Irishman (@IrishmanIRL) November 18, 2023

And here’s the Irish Examiner describing the demonstration in Kerry and Rosslare and being “protests against refugees”.  Plus ça change …

Protests against refugees in Killarney and Rosslarehttps://t.co/tSnXex8PHJ

— Deirdre O'Shaughnessy (@deshocks) November 18, 2023

But the Examiner and the establishment can say what it likes – as I wrote last week, there is now mounting evidence that, as one local said, the people are “sick of being walked on” and feel they have “done enough”.

The bigger question for all those disenchanted voters is what they are now going to do to wrest sufficient political control from those who clearly have no interest in putting Ireland, her people, and her culture first.