The South Dublin County Partnership (SDCP) – a taxpayer funded body which works to promote social development – has neither confirmed nor denied a claim by the Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland (MASI) that the partnership was providing transport for asylum seekers to “go out and vote”.
The claim was posted yesterday by MASI on X as an update to its previous post on June 6th that they had “received no information from Minister Roderic O’Gormans’s department regarding transport to polling stations tomorrow. “
“There are asylum seekers who are registered to vote in places that have no public transport from the Direct Provision to polling station,” the organisation said.
However, later that day MASI posted that: “South Dublin County Partnership has arranged transport for asylum seekers to go out and vote. And our advice is to leave racists blank on the ballot.”
MASI had claimed that: “Any party in favour of the EU’s Migration and Asylum Pact which would introduce detention at the border while asylum claim is processed here in Ireland, is amongst racists to be left blank”.
They had also posted that: “we’ve had a lot of asylum seekers who want to vote but have no idea who to vote for because some candidates haven’t bothered to provide literature. We had a meeting to discuss elections and opted to encourage people to leave racists blank on ballot”.
Asylum seekers and migrants who are not citizens of the country are permitted to vote in the local, but not Dail or European, elections if they have been registered as voters.
Asked today by Gript if the SDCP provided transport to facilitate asylum seekers voting, the SDCP did not respond. Before putting a follow-up call to an email, a SDCP staff member on reception asked if Gript was a left wing or right wing publication.
The staff member Gript spoke to could not answer our queries on transport – but said that SCDP had not provided transport to other groups of voters, such as people with disabilities or elderly people, in the past.
Gript was told that the call would be returned but this had not happened by close of business, although the email with the following queries had asked for a reply by 1pm: