Some asylum seekers decide to leave Clare after blockade at former hotel

Residents in Inch, Co Clare, have been told they are not in danger or at risk from the arrival of 34 male asylum seekers who moved to the area on Monday night.

The asylum seekers arrived at the Magowna House Hotel site where there is total capacity for 69 international protection (IP) applicants. Protesters were continuing to block access on Tuesday, in order to prevent further asylum seekers being moved there by the State. Gardaí were also at the site and a small number of the men left the property.

The group had been accommodated at three holiday homes on the site of the disused hotel. Shortly after their arrival, access roads to the hotel were blocked by protesters using tractors, with another gate blocked by a silage bale.

The Co Clare incident comes as the Government struggles to house asylum seekers across the country, amid the continuing housing crisis, and a protest at a makeshift refugee camp on Dublin’s Sandwith Street on Friday that culminated in the burning of tents and belongings there.

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At a meeting with local residents at Clare County Council’s chamber on Tuesday morning, council chief executive Pat Dowling told residents: “I wouldn’t like any message to go out from here today that the local community is in danger or at risk. I have seen no evidence of that and would not like it to be promoted that the local community is in danger.”

In response to Mr Dowling’s remarks, one local man said “we are entitled to our fears”.

Around 40 locals attended the hastily organised meeting attended by local TDs Cathal Crowe (FF) and Michael McNamara (Ind), and members of Clare Co Council PJ Kelly (FF) and Cllr Pat Daly (FF).

‘I want to stay’

At Magowna House, some asylum seekers decided to leave. Sharif from Algeria told reporters that he was leaving the hotel and heading to Dublin city centre, but said he would have liked to stay.

“We’re going to Dublin city centre, we’ll live homeless in Dublin city centre,” he said, adding that this was “better than here” because they felt they were “not accepting us here”.

He said there were 34 men being housed in three holiday homes, with bunk beds provided for them. “I want to live here, yes, (it’s) lovely here but (there’s a) problem with people, maybe.”

He said he’d walk to Ennis from the hotel and travel on to Dublin. “I want to stay here really,” he said, adding that he wouldn’t because he didn’t feel welcome.

Others said they were happy to stay. Sultan Muhammad, from Afghanistan, said he came to Ireland five months ago and had been staying in Citywest in Dublin. He described the situation Co Clare in “difficult” but said the accommodation was “okay”.

“We are feeling good here. I like this place.” He added: “I like it, I will live here.”

At the meeting chaired by Mr McNamara, Mr Dowling made his comments in response to concerns expressed by one woman for teenage girls who engage in sports training in the area.

She told the meeting: “You will have 69 men standing there. They are young men. We used to have young girls that would run up and down the road.

“This might sound like an obsessive fear but do you think anyone would be comfortable who has a 15- or 16-year-old daughter who would choose that road to train for her team? Now there will be 69 young lads inside. Let’s call a spade a spade in all fairness.”

The woman’s words were applauded by locals present.

She said that local people had received no information on the transfer for the IP applicants to Magowna House on Monday evening.

She asked the meeting: “Are we just the garbage in the street?… We are being dictated to, we are being told ‘shut up and put up’. We are going to be portrayed as being the most awful bunch of lunatics for even questioning what is going on.”

Another woman told the meeting: “We are very far from racist. We are a very welcoming community. It is extremely upsetting what is happening. I should be at work today. It is not fair on them and it is not fair on us.”

Another resident told the meeting: “These 69 people - God love them - have been landed into a community where they know no one and we don’t know them and they have no amenities or facilities. It is not acceptable.

“I don’t think it is acceptable to expect the people of Magowna in Inch to have to live with those poor people walking our roads making it unsafe for us as a community and having it unsafe for them.”

The Government is scrambling to find shelter for 520 asylum seekers it has been unable to accommodate after anti-immigrant protesters targeted camps of homeless asylum seekers sleeping in tents in Dublin city in recent days.

Mr Crowe told the meeting that “the ugly Dublin protests have very much coloured how the department see this”.

He said that the general approach by “some civil service guru” is the best thing to do is give no information to the community”.

Mr Dowling told the local residents that the council had no prior knowledge of the IP applicants’ arrival on Monday evening.

He said the council would work with the agencies “to ensure that these men are not left loitering in that facility for weeks and months at end without services being provided”.

Minister of State for Community Development and Integration Joe O’Brien said: “I just ask people to step down the blockade, I think it is done on the basis of a misunderstanding of what’s happened.”

On concerns about the isolated location of the holiday homes, Mr O’Brien told RTÉ’s Today with Claire Byrne that a shuttle bus would be provided to Ennis for asylum seekers who wanted to access services there. - Additional reporting: PA