Amid a huge immigration surge, a shortfall of 250,000 homes and soaring rents, the Irish Government has sent in riot police to Tipperary where locals are protesting the closure of their last hotel to accommodate asylum seekers. The Telegraph has more.
Riot police standing guard outside the Racket Hall hotel in rural Tipperary are tetchy. The 40-room guest house in one of Ireland’s oldest market towns remains intact but recent history suggests that it could soon be reduced to a smouldering wreck.
Local lorry driver Justin Phelan has no intention of setting the building alight but his message to the 160 asylum seekers destined for his hometown is clear: “Roscrea is full”.
“The services are on the ground here in this town,” Mr. Phelan, 34, told the Telegraph. “Not just in this town – all across the country they’re on the ground. There’s God knows how many people on trolleys today in Limerick hospital.
“We have around five GPs in this town. You call any of them this minute and he’ll say, ‘I don’t have space, I’m full up.’ There’s 33 children in my daughter’s class. Just imagine adding two more, with language difficulties. What effect is that going to have on the rest of the children already in the class?”
Mr. Phelan is one many holding vigil outside the hotel in what has become a snapshot of unrest across rural Ireland at the Government’s perceived clumsy handling of a surge in migration.
Protests have been rising across the country at resettlement programmes as Ireland’s housing system creaks, leading in some extreme cases to public buildings being torched.
Huddled around one of the open fires at the Roscrea hotel entrance, Mr. Phelan said he has “been here every day” since last Thursday, when the Irish Government gave local politicians 24-hours notice that the hotel was being closed down to the public to house asylum seekers.
Weddings and parties scheduled to take place in the town’s only hotel have been cancelled after the owners reached an agreement with the Government.
After some demonstrators tried on Monday to block a bus carrying the first 17 arrivals, mainly women and children, from entering the car park, violent scuffles with the gardaí, members of the Irish police force, broke out.
Immigration to Ireland rose by 32% to more than 140,000 in the year ending April 2023. Of these arrivals, more than 13,000 were asylum seekers. And since the Russian invasion, nearly 100,000 Ukrainians have arrived in Ireland.
The immigration influx – the largest since 2007 – comes amid a shortfall of 250,000 homes in Ireland and astronomical rent prices.
The Irish Government recently admitted that there is not enough room to house new arrivals, slashing the monetary allowance for Ukrainians by four fifths and offering new asylum seekers tents to sleep in.
In Roscrea, many locals have been camping outside the Racket Hall hotel through the night.
“This is the only hotel in our town and if you take it away, as bad as our town is now, it’s going to be worse,” said Mr. Phelan.
But the local reaction in Roscrea has not all been negative, with some leaving toys outside the hotel’s doors for its young guests. A number of families who have attended the demonstrations are at pains to point out that their gripe is with Government policy, not with the individuals arriving in their town.
While Leo Varadkar, the Taoiseach, acknowledged people living in communities where asylum seekers are being housed have legitimate “fears”, he said “nobody in a democracy has the right to veto … who moves into their area”.
A poll by the Business Post/Red C in May 2023 found that 75% of Irish voters believed Ireland had taken in “too many” refugees.
Migration protests have also been staged in the disadvantaged suburb of Ballymun and rural towns in counties Carlow and Mayo.
The disaffection has escalated to full-blown revolt by some in local government, with Mayo County Council on Tuesday voting unanimously to cease co-operation with the central Government over the housing of asylum seekers – the first council in Ireland to do so.
Tipperary would seem a long way for asylum seekers to go to seek a safe shore (there’s a song about that). But Ireland, like many Western countries, is clearly a long way from finding an immigration and asylum policy that its population is content to live with.
Worth reading in full.
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What is going on here? This is no accident this is an orchestrated attempt to replace Brandon with the deep states/Soros/Obama cliques next preferred candidate, probably the shallow Gavin Newsom. For those who don’t know he’s California’s Trudeau, but possibly even more amoral. Whatever Obama/Soros etc are pulling the strings on this one.
It is not just the Obamas who want a share of the spoils. Those other hereditary Democrat families may not want to sit back and see it go to the Obamas again. Will be delicious to watch them tearing each other apart.
It’s a bit like a Norman succession in many ways.
Like the Bush’s
Newsom …. or Michelle Obama? What’s the betting they go for the black female. If she announces she’s gay, or better still trans and is really a man, they’ll tick three boxes.
If MO flashes her Shlong it will be close in a run off with GN , two pricks together in fact !!
You could well be right !!
This cannot be true. ——–Why would this geriatric person who should really be looking over lake from a bath chair in a care home somewhere have “sensitive documents”?. ——-He wouldn’t know they were sensitive. He wouldn’t even know he had them. And if he did read them he would forget it 10 minutes later.
He’s been smuggling classified documents out for decades, long before he became senile.
He doesn’t know what these documents were nor can even remember whether his underwear was changed.
So the Yanks would rather have a bumbling, forgetful, senile old law breaker against whom there is real evidence as President, than Donald. Says a lot for TDS in the mass of the electorate.
I want an opinion from someone who he has spoken to recently, like Mitterand.
Trump is now odds-on with the bookies to win, and comfortably ahead in polling in swing states. I get the impression that there are not many swing voters on either side now, and not many in the middle – anyone now intending to support Trump is going to do so no matter what, and the same for Biden. Why anyone would vote for Biden is beyond me, but there you go.
Meanwhile, in other DC news, Michael Mann chose to have his defamation case heard there because its the pinnacle of probity and fair play. John Williams, Mann’s first counsel, in summing up, demeaned the whole show by playing the Trump card against Steyn. In the final minutes of the trial he linked “election deniers” with “science deniers” and asked the jury to send out a strong message to stop attacks on all the other scientists out there. (No conflation of two outcomes there then). Despite Steyn, having conducted his own defence and considered to be the victor in court exchanges, the jury found in favour of Mann and ordered Steyn to pay him $1m in damages. ‘Justice’ DC style!
Democrat cities are gulags.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/oh-the-irony-mps-welcome-migrant-thugs-then-demand-protection-from-them/
Our ever efficient MP’s now want personal protection from the “safe and effective”
illegal immigrantsthird world trash that we are importing on a daily basisThis is beyond parody.
They want protection from everyone so they can continue representing Other Interests safely but at our expense. Imported attackers makes it easier to justify.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-lefts-approach-to-democracy-if-you-cant-beat-them-ban-them/
The author makes some good points about our elites but still displays a naive belief in the ballot box.
Also while anti-elite parties are making gains elsewhere, I don’t see much blue sky here in the UK – some are planning to desert the mainstream parties for Reform – probably majority of these will be ex-Tory voters, but support for Labour who will be more of the same as the Tories but much worse is UP. So depressing that people’s dissatisfaction doesn’t push them further than “I will vote for the ‘opposition'”.
Biden—The ventriloquists dummy. —–But who is the ventriloquist?
Gotta love this ‘democracy’: When the aren’t calling each other Nazis, they’re mutually alleging insanity and/or unfitness for office. Propose policies? Oppose policies? Bah, humbug! That’s not how votes are being won!
In the light of this:
https://whitehorsebrewery.co.uk/product/stable-genius-4-0
That’s at least a decent ale.