OPINION: Let's be honest' - Towns aren't protesting asylum centres over 'services'

I've heard it said that Irish people don't protest enough; we just roll over and put up with bad Government policies on housing, health and everything else. We don't mobilise like our continental cousins like the French yellow jackets or the German farmers. That's not true of 2024 which has started with a flurry of protests against asylum centres in towns across Ireland, from Baillinrobe to Carlow to Roscrea this week. 

But where we have really failed to mobilise on big ticket items like health and housing, save for the odd march on the Dáil in relatively small numbers, we seem to have come into our own now protesting against men, women and children seeking a better life in Ireland. 

'Roscrea is full' was the slogan on a placard outside the Racket Hall Hotel in the Tipperary town this week as at times hundreds, mostly dozens, of people gave rousing speeches about 'the good of the town' around a campfire at the gates. The same protesters were there when soft cap public order gardaí were required to move a small number of asylum seekers, women and their crying children, from a bus into the building.

There had been mistruths bandied around before those arrivals and they followed very similar lines to other protests in other parts of the country. The perennial fear of large groups of foreign men moving into an old hotel or disused building appears to be the catalyst for protest in Ireland. And yet when those women and children moved into the Racket Hall, the protesters didn't go home. 

With that in mind you have to assume the protest is then targeted at the people now living in the hotel and not the owners or the Department of Integration or the Government. And yet the placards are still displayed proudly and microphones are turned up to the last as locals bemoan the lack of services in their town. As they say themselves, 'Roscrea is full,' 'Carlow is full,' Ballinrobe is full,' all linking back to that vile trope pushed on social media by high-profile far right figures. 

If you were to take that slogan as genuine, along with the issues raised by protesters; the lack of GP places for people, dentists, schools and so on, then it begs the question - why are these same people not objecting to every planning permission submitted for new housing estates or apartments in their towns? By the same token, there won't be services available for the people moving into those homes either.

And yet we don't see makeshift pickets set up at the gates of building sites up and down the country because the person buying the resultant house might have a school of child-going age, and God forbid they may be entitled to free GP care. Wouldn't they use the very same services people are saying are 'full'? But no campfire protests for them. It's no great mystery why; it's the same attitude that led to people saying foreigners were 'taking our jobs' in the early 2000s. It's anti-immigrant, plain and simple. Dress it up any way you like.

Protests about services like those mentioned would not have to take place at a centre for asylum seekers as they were issues before those people ever moved in. Don't conflate them to somehow make your anti-immigrant protest semi-respectable. If you have a grievance over services like GPs and schools, take it up with your politicians, don't direct it at some of the most vulnerable people in our country. Similarly, if you have an issue with the Government's immigration policy, protest that government, not a community of people already marginalised and isolated. 

Politicians have also attached themselves to these protests and you had a clip circulating of TD Mattie McGrath labelling the asylum seeker situation as a "colonisation of our country, a takeover of our country." He said: "It'd frighten you what's going on with the unvetting and the people coming straight in, no documentation." This sort of language from an elected official is dangerous. He encouraged people in his next breath to "keep your vigil" and that he would support them.

It's language like "colonisation" and "unvetting" that whips up fear in communities all over Ireland. It's the kind of rhetoric trumpeted by people at these protests and circulated online as some sort of justification. There have been instances in the last few weeks and months where buildings earmarked, or even just rumoured to be earmarked, for asylum seekers, have been burnt to the ground. We can't keep distancing ourselves from these things in our communities; they're happening and it's disgraceful and too many politicians tell people what they want to hear from one side of their mouth and then condemn the end result from the other. It's populism of the lowest form and it's happening all over the country.

Protesters in these towns are protesting because of fear-mongering that so often spreads on social media. They are afraid because people have told them these asylum seekers are all "unvetted" and "have burned their documents" and are going to rape and kill our women and children. That's why they are on the streets outside these buildings but they won't admit that and therein lies the problem. This fear is being perpetuated by far-right agitators online with very consistent language. Rather than a 'plantation' of asylum seekers, there's a 'plantation' of misinformation taking place and the Government is doing very little to stop it. 

The one criticism above all others that can be squarely landed at the Government's door is the lack of communication and lack of clear immigration policy. You can't put a fence around your house without filling in some form or looking for planning permission so your neighbours can have a look at the plans first. People are acutely aware of this and that's why it's so hard to swallow when a building of any kind and any condition can be turned around in days as a place of accommodation without any planning permission or consultation. People are rightly outraged over that but the government, without admitting it, fears if it does communicate these plans, the buildings will be burnt down before anyone is moved in. It's a vicious circle and there are two things to blame; racism and bad governance.

Those two things festering together is like mixing vinegar and bleach. What we're left with is a toxicity that promotes an 'us and them' mentality. One placard in Roscrea labelled the Government as 'traitors.' That's the attitude that prevails now in these rural towns and in the chasm created between people and Government sits the likes of the far-right commentators who set upon these towns, even when not welcomed, to drive fear and fan the flames of hate. The scary thing is it's working.

At the end of the day, the whole thing boils down to people. Locals with grievances about how their communities are treated and asylum seekers fleeing persecution and arriving off a bus to a heaving protest held back by a line of gardaí. Neither group deserves the treatment they receive and a solution to appease both seemingly impossible to find.