Dozens of fences erected along the Grand Canal in South Dublin were pulled down on Thursday evening following a pro-refugee protest in Portobello.
The barriers had been erected by Waterways Ireland in May along a 2km-stretch of the canal to prevent the return of homeless asylum seekers who were using the canal banks as a campsite.
More than 200 people gathered in the plaza beside the Nyx hotel in Portobello at 7pm calling for the fencing to be removed.
A coalition of activists, including the Community Action Tenants Union (CATU) and members of People Before Profit (PBP), said they had previously requested that Waterways Ireland remove the fencing by the end of July.
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Chants of “say it loud, say it clear, refugees are welcome here” could be heard as about two dozen protesters pulled down the barriers between Portobello and Harold’s Cross bridge.
Gardaí arrived at the scene shortly after 8pm and one male protester in his 20s was taken away in handcuffs. He was later released without charge, a Garda spokeswoman confirmed.
A number of gardaí began pushing the fences upright and back into place as the crowd dispersed.
Some 330 tents have been removed from the Dublin canals to date, Waterways Ireland told an Oireachtas committee earlier this month. The authority has spent €125,000 to date on the barriers, with ongoing costs in the region of €20,000 per month.
People Before Profit councillor Darragh Adelaide, speaking on behalf of the United Against Racism group, said the fencing along the canal was “designed to dehumanise” asylum seekers and refugees.
“There’s a lot of lies told about refugees, that it’s immigrants who are causing the housing crisis,” said Mr Adelaide.
“We have enough money now, we have enough workers, enough resources now to build enough homes, to house everybody, to have enough people to run our hospitals, to run our schools,” he said.
“Every single worker who comes here, regardless of where they’re from, will contribute more in value to Ireland than they will ever take from this place.”
Katrina Koch from the Rathmines-Ranelagh CATU branch, told attendees that fences were not the solution when “the real issue we need to be addressing is the housing crisis, not an alleged immigration crisis.”
Ms Koch warned that far-right groups were “feeding off the rightful anger and dissatisfaction of people living in substandard housing” and that they had “misdirected people’s rage” towards the “most vulnerable people in our society”.
“Targeting asylum seekers and the homeless for problems they did not create achieves nothing,” she said.
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