Ireland has exploded into a wave of violence as anti-migrant anger is at an all time high – after the number of people applying to come into the country rocketed by nearly 300 per cent five years.
Shocking new videos show Dublin descending into chaos – with fighting thugs throwing themselves into busses, knife fights on their streets and mass brawls sparking in residential roads.
In others, men patrol the capital to keep the city ‘safe’ while police can be seen using riot shields and pepper spray as they crack down on protests.
As many as 150,000 people moved to Ireland in 2023-24, Central Statistics Office (CSO) figures revealed, the highest number in 17 years – with many of them accommodated in poor areas of central Dublin or small provincial towns. Only 30,000 of these were returning Irish citizens.
There are now nearly 33,000 international protection applicants being housed across the nation, up from 7,244 in 2017. Alongside arrivals from Africa and the Middle East, 100,000 refugees flocked to the country following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Each costs the nation nearly £70 a day, a figure that has increased by a third in two years. At the end of last year the Irish Refugee Council revealed there were a record 3,001 asylum seekers homeless in Ireland.
The budget for housing Ukranian refugees has been slashed from £910million in 2023 to less than £340million this year, with officials saying the reduction is expected to continue.
Once sleepy towns are now homes to hundreds of asylum seekers while tent cities have been set up along Dublin’s Grand Canal.
And with far-right sentiment at fever pitch the country is on a knife edge – with even Ireland’s left-wing politicians admitting that the influx of migrants was driving a spike in homelessness.
Shocking videos from Dublin show the capital descending into chaos – with fighting thugs throwing themselves into busses
A man holds a bike above his head as he prepares to throw it at a man as a group fight on a residential road
In other clips, a large group of men can be seen patrolling the roads to keep the city ‘safe’
A brawl breaks out on a Dublin street as two men fight in front of a store decorated for Christmas
A man can be seen with a blade as a gang of men run away from him in the capital
Aoife Gallagher, from the Institute of Strategic Dialogue, who monitors far right activity, has previously said that there has been an escalation in migrants being targeted in Ireland.
‘We see consistently, a couple of times every week, horrific attacks on migrants,’ she told the BBC.
‘We see people standing outside IPAS centres waiting for asylum seekers in order to confront them and intimidate them.
‘There’s a level of political violence that we haven’t seen before.’
Last year this was dramatically brought into focus as anti-immigration protesters sparked chaos across Dublin, throwing petrol bombs, torching cars and setting fire to a paint factory that was due to host 550 asylum seekers.
Gardai clashed with hundreds of people gathered at the former Crown Paints factory in Coolock as fighting exploded throughout the day. A number of fires were started at the site after anti-immigration protesters set up a makeshift camp, with dramatic photos showing a digger in flames.
The police force charged 15 people in relation to the public order incidents at the north Dublin site.
The November before right wing figures including MMA star Conor McGregor had ramped up fury on social media before people took to the streets over online misinformation and unsubstantiated rumours that a Algerian migrant had stabbed three children outside a kindergarten. The fighter posted: ‘Ireland is at war’.
Gardai officers deploy pepper spray at a protester today after fires were started at the former site of the Crown Paints factory in Coolock, north Dublin in 2024
A protester throws an object at Gardai officers as they deploy pepper spray in retaliation
Gardai officers stand guard next to a digger that was set alight during riots in 2024
A youngster throws a bottle towards gardai officers during a stand off with protesters in 2024
Ireland was left reeling after as many as 500 thugs launched an anti-migrant rampage, gathering close to some of the city’s most iconic locations with some waving flags and brandishing signs reading ‘Irish Lives Matter’.
Some of the rioters started a fire on the ground floor of a Holiday Inn Express following rumours that migrants were staying there. Others reportedly petrol-bombed a nearby refugee centre, with fire crews who responded being ‘pelted with projectiles’ and beaten with iron rods.
Shocking scenes saw police officers attacked, with around 50 sustaining injuries – one of whom faced having a toe amputated – while buses and a tram were torched and one driver was punched and dragged from his cab.
Masked youths seized the outbreak of anarchy to smash store windows and strip them of designer trainers and sporting goods.
Armed police were even dispatched to Irish PM Leo Varadkar’s Dublin home after calls on extremist messaging sites for rioters to descend on it, the Irish Times reported.
Responding to the violence, migrant communities said they were fearful for their safety, with some parents pulling their children from school.
A Muslim-run soup kitchen, where many female volunteers wear veils, shut amid safety fears. Founder Lorraine O’Connor said: ‘We don’t want anybody to be an easy target. We just don’t want any more suffering.’
She added that Muslim migrants were were as outraged by the ‘barbaric act’ as the wider community. ‘But because they say he’s Muslim, we have to carry the weight of this on our shoulders, and we shouldn’t because, in our eyes, as much as the Irish community are mourning for the hurt and pain of them children and their poor families, we are too.’
Gardai clashed with rioters in Dublin after several people were injured in a stabbing outside a school in the Irish capital in November 2023
False reports on social media speculated about the suspect’s nationality, causing angry locals to take to the streets in protest
After setting several police vehicles, a double decker bus and a tram alight, videos circulating on X show that people have began to loot as they broke into several stores, like Foot Locker (pictured above) and took armfuls of items
A bus was torched by rioters who scrawled the word ‘out’ across its rear as it burned
In December that year an inferno ripped through a 19th Century Georgian country hotel in Galway, hours after protesters gathered outside the Ross Lake House hotel, Rosscahill, amid concerns about migrants in the area.
The elegant hotel had not been used in a number of years, but was due to accommodate 70 asylum seekers prior to the arson attack.
The fire broke out at approximately 11.35pm and nobody was inside the building when it was engulfed in flames. The Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration, and Youth, for Dublin West, described the incident as a ‘disgraceful act.’
But the anger against migrants can also be seen at local communities across Ireland.
In Newtown Mount Kennedy, a small town in Co. Wicklow, to the south of Dublin, a former convent has been turned into a holding centre for people seeking asylum.
Protests were held 24/7 outside the property when the plan was first announced, with attempts to disperse the crowd resulting in violent clashes with police.
People from Somalia, Sudan and Nigeria have been temporarily housed in makeshift marquee-style tents on an estate separated from the local population by a 10ft-tall fence.
The partition is daubed with the words ‘Newtown says no’, graffitied in the colours of the Irish flag, The Guardian reports.
In December that year an inferno ripped through a 19th Century Georgian country hotel in Galway, hours after protesters gathered outside the Ross Lake House hotel, Rosscahill, amid concerns about migrants in the area
Fire crews brought the fire under control and a technical examination of the site is taking place later today
A group of locals, Newtown Together, who try and support the camp’s residents say that the barrier has created a sense of ‘them and us’
Migrants claim they have been targeted by locals, with one group saying a driver mounted the pavement and came within ‘five or six inches’ of them when they were walking back to the camp.
One man, on the other side of a metal gate elsewhere in Ireland, can be seen in furious footage arguing with locals.
He says: ‘We are not criminals. We are not refugees who left our countries for reasons. We left our country because you f****d it up!’
And even in local politics, fringe councilors have been elected on anti-immigrant platforms while three nationalist parties joined to form the National Alliance party in a bid for the 2024 election.
Speaking after his election in June, Independent councillor and taxi driver Gavin Pepper stood in front of a flag held by his supporters and said: ‘the Government needs to wake up and send them home’.
Solicitor Malachy Steenson was hoisted onto his supporters’ shoulders when his name was read out for the North Inner City seat and said: ‘we’re taking our nation back.’
While polls said immigration was still not the deciding factor before the vote, they showed that for the first time it was a genuine consideration.
The partition is daubed with the words ‘Newtown says no’ in huge letters alongside the Union Jack and the Irish tricolour
Speaking after his election in June, Independent councillor and taxi driver Gavin Pepper stood in front of a flag held by his supporters and said: ‘the Government needs to wake up and send them home’
Solicitor Malachy Steenson (pictured at an Ireland Says No anti-refugee gathering) was hoisted onto his supporters’ shoulders when his name was read out for the North Inner City seat and said: ‘we’re taking our nation back’
The two key issues – housing and healthcare – had both been hit by the surge in population.
House prices are more than a tenth up on the previous property boom in 2007, while the average rent has risen by 43 per cent in five years. And despite locals not being put on the same housing lists as arriving migrants, many blamed them for a dearth of places.
A hardening of government policy has seen the number of deportation orders against illegal immigrants rise by 156 per cent. Police on the border with Northern Ireland expel them the day they are detained.
As the government admitted not all immigrants could be given homes, a tent city was created in Dublin stretching around the International Protection Office and continuing along the road.
When MailOnline visited the area last year the contrast in Dublin was stark. As friends and families soaked up the sunshine along the tranquil Grand Canal on Friday, migrants were being quizzed by police in their tents on the footpath – and ugly metal fences were being erected to block others from joining.
The Irish Refugee Council say there are now more than 3,000 asylum seekers homeless in Ireland. Since December 2023, 5,671 of 6,407 have been refused accommodation, while only 736 were immediately accommodated after a vulnerability triage.
Irish Refugee Council CEO, Nick Henderson, said: ‘We can’t continue to normalise homelessness and have the State effectively delegate its duties to volunteers and under resourced charities. It puts both people seeking protection and those helping them at risk of harm.’
Last year UK Government ministers flatly rejected Dublin’s demands to take back asylum seekers crossing from Northern Ireland.
The Republic has voiced alarm that large numbers are taking advantage of the invisible border on the island to avoid being deported to Rwanda, with ministers saying more than 80 per cent of the country’s asylum seekers arrive this way.
Taoiseach Simon Harris vowed to pass new laws to facilitate returns of migrants, after the country’s courts declared the UK cannot be classed as ‘safe’ due to the pact with the African state.
The government has previously spoken favourably about migration. Jamie Drummond, Co-Founder and Executive Director of NGO ONE and a friend of U2 star Bono, told the International Development Committee in 2015 that young immigrants were needed to help with Ireland’s ‘senile’ aging population.
The string of makeshift accommodation stretching around the International Protection Office and continuing along the road, was dubbed a ‘tent city’
Tents housing asylum seekers near to the International Protection Office, in Dublin
When MailOnline visited the area last year the contrast in Dublin was stark. As friends and families soaked up the sunshine along the tranquil Grand Canal on Friday, migrants were being quizzed by police in their tents on the footpath
She said: ‘Just as this country and this continent will be at its most senile demographically speaking, Africa will be the world’s youth and the supply of the world’s energy, creativity and dynamism.
‘If we have invested properly in their education, governance and long-term security and the ability and belief that people can make a contribution in their economies and societies.
‘If we fail to make those long-term investments because we are lurching in response from crisis to crisis or because we are indifferent, we will significantly regret the missed opportunity of having their engagement in a positive way and we will regret unfolding increased crises at that time.’
Project Ireland 2040 – an initiative unveiled in 2018 – forecasting nearly two million extra people in Ireland in 15 years time who would need an extra £96billion in investment for infrastructure and housing.
This huge figure was intended to be used to expand cities and settle rural areas, although it has quickly been left in the dust as the number of arrivals has reached more than double the initial estimates, The Telegraph reports.
A study by the London School of Economics found that far-right protests in Ireland had seen structural racism and existing views ‘supercharged’ by social media.
And they blamed the government for cutting funding to anti-racism initiatives in the wake of the 2008 financial crash for allowing views to spiral.
They concluded: ‘More needs to be done to ensure already woefully neglected communities receive sufficient state resources to facilitate greater community integration of asylum seekers and migrants, allowing these communities to view immigration as beneficial, hence helping to tackle embedded racism.
Ugly metal fences were being erected to block others from joining the encampments
Struggles with migration come against a backdrop of a housing shortage crisis, high taxes and a failing healthcare system
‘It is this issue of distribution which needs to be at the centre of public debate on immigration, rather than the toxic, polarising and racist frames favoured by the far right and, increasingly, some “mainstream” politicians.
The hashtag ‘Ireland is full’ frequently trends on social media as experts fear sites like X, formerly Twitter, have fanned suspicion within communities.
Researchers from the Institute of Strategic Dialogue (ISD) found misinformation by far right Irish figures is rising across all social media platforms in analysis of 13 million posts from 1,640 accounts over the last three years.
They found that the pandemic had brought together previously fringe groups including those holding right-wing views and anti-vaxx campaigners around Covid conspiracy theories.
And when this passed the links ‘didn’t disappear’, with many moving on to target refugees and the LGBT community, The Irish Times reports.
X is the most common platform for hateful posts, with researchers finding 1,158 accounts that posted 11.7 million tweets between January 2020 and April 2023. The creation of these spiked following 2022 immigration protests and Elon Musk taking over the site in 2023.
Kremlin disinformation also sparked a flood of disinformation following the invasion of Ukraine, including claims the war was started by the West and that Zelensky’s government was controlled by Nazis.
ISD said: ‘These narratives also aim to downplay the severity of the war and fuel animosity towards Ukrainian refugees by suggesting they receive preferential treatment over the local population.’
