Protesters complaining about the use of an office block to accommodate refugees in Dublin’s East Wall have vowed to block traffic using Dublin Tunnel at least three times a week until their demands are met.
The protesters said their action was brought about “purely” because of the inadequacy of the office block to house the refugees.
Spokesman for the protesters Nigel Murphy said: “This is not about not wanting asylum seekers in our community, it’s purely about housing them in appropriate accommodation and not in old office blocks.”
However, other protesters have said they were protesting about a lack of consultation from Government and the number of single men being accommodated. The Government has said that the accommodation will serve a mixture of families, single people, and women and children.
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Mr Murphy said the protests “will continue every Monday, Wednesday and Friday until further notice or until the provision centre is closed down. This is just a small taste of what’s to come. Protests will escalate nationwide if this Government does not close this centre in its entirety.”
During the most recent protest on Monday night, which saw the Dublin Tunnel blocked for a number of hours, protesters said they had successfully blocked the port tunnel entrance into East Wall, delaying commuter and commercial traffic at least as far back as the M50
On Monday evening, gardaí set up a traffic management operation to handle the congestion in the area but said the operation concluded after 7pm.
Gardaí were not available to comment on the possibility of future blockades at the time of writing.
A source connected to the Dublin Tunnel said the timing of the protest in the evening meant that the Port Tunnel’s high pricing period had kicked in for traffic leaving the city. “The traffic was correspondingly light,” they said.
