How anti-immigrant anger has divided a small Irish town

On a cold January afternoon in Roscrea, a market town of about 5,500 in rural Ireland, the news started to spread that the city’s only remaining hotel would temporarily close – to provide housing for 160 asylum seekers.

Almost immediately, speculation and anger began swirling online.

Posts on a local Facebook group blamed the closure on the government and the fact that “non-nationals” had moved in. Someone called for people to gather outside the hotel, Racket Hall, to demand answers.

That evening, dozens of people showed up for an impromptu protest that divided the city and became a symbol of growing anti-immigration sentiment across Ireland for months. A small group of locals have maintained a constant presence in the hotel car park since then, using a tent for protection from the rain and a metal drum for a fire pit.

Similar demonstrations have sprung up across Ireland in the past year, fueled by nativist rhetoric online, a housing shortage and a cost of living crisis. Occasionally they have erupted in case of violence: There was a riot in Dublin last yearand a series of arsons have targeted accommodations intended for asylum seekers.

Although the Roscrea protest was small and largely peaceful, it reflects a well-defined script. “It’s not like this is all centrally planned,” says Mark Malone, a researcher at the Hope and Courage Collective, which monitors the far right in Ireland. “But it creates a kind of repertoire of tactics that people replicate because they see it happening elsewhere.”

Roscrea grew up around a seventh-century monastery in a valley in County Tipperary, and the population peaked before the famine of 1840 and declined over the next 150 years. The sleepy streets are lined with a few pubs and shops, while on the outskirts the roads are lined with abandoned buildings and dilapidated houses. Nearly 73 percent of the declining population was identified as “white Irish” at the most recent census.

It is a place where people have been emigrating from for a long time. By means of 2020, a community survey recorded a lack of investment, poor employment and “a general feeling that the city has been forgotten.”

For some locals, the hotel’s closure felt like the final straw. “Some people in Roscrea already feel like we are not being served well by the government, and then the government wants to come down and plant people in our town,” said Justin Phelan, 34, one of the protesters.

The protesters harbor several grievances – such as concerns about housing and jobs, and fears that locals are being ‘replaced’. The unifying theme is the sense that their hardships are linked to immigrants.

On January 15, when the first asylum seekers were supposed to move in, about sixty demonstrators tried to stop their arrival. Images posted online a scuffle broke out and demonstrators shouted at the police, who were there to ensure the immigrants’ safety. As some locals shouted: ‘Ireland is full’ and ‘We have no room’, 17 people, including children, were ushered into the hotel.

In mid-February, a dozen protesters were still milling around the site under banners reading “Ireland is full” and “Justice for Roscrea people.” Every morning someone made breakfast in a van connected to a generator. Cups of tea flowed freely.

“You can’t keep putting people in a city where there is nothing for the people who are already there,” said Marie-Claire Doran, 42. “Everyone has a border, and every city has a border. That’s why I came here.”

The people around her nodded approvingly. Some described asylum seekers in charged and alarming terms. “They’re in every nook and cranny you can find,” said Mr. Phelan’s sister, Maria Phelan, 31.

Many protesters wrongly said that the city’s Irish were outnumbered by newcomers. According to government data, Roscrea had only 321 asylum seekers and 153 Ukrainians (under a separate, temporary European program) at the end of January.

The government has not announced the nationalities of the asylum seekers in Roscrea; throughout Ireland, the five most common countries of origin were Nigeria, Georgia, Algeria, Afghanistan and Somalia, according to government data.

Ireland is experiencing a major housing shortage caused by successive governments’ failure to invest in affordable housing and by the cascading effects of the 2008 financial crisis. This, together with frustration over the perceived lack of local resources, has contributed to anger and resentment that is often misdirected on newcomers, experts say.

And although asylum seekers make up a small proportion of immigrants in Ireland – 13,000 in 2023 – they are often the focus of hostility because the government has a legal obligation to ensure they are housed.

Asylum applications have increased in Europe against the backdrop of rising global conflict, after falling during the height of the pandemic in 2020. According to government data, Ireland is currently home to around 27,000 asylum seekers, compared to fewer than 7,000 per year in the previous two decades. 2020.

The arrival of more than 100,000 Ukrainian refugees since 2022 has increased the pressure on housing. While most are in Dublin and other cities, the government is increasingly forced to look at smaller towns and villages as well.

“It’s a perfect storm,” says Nick Henderson, the director of the Irish Refugee Council, a charity, given what he and others say is the government’s inability to explain its plans or address people’s concerns. (The government denies this lack of communication.) But, he added, there was little opposition to the refugees in some communities.

Despite the loud protests, many in Roscrea were also welcome. On a recent morning, Margo O’Donnell-Roche, a community worker with the non-profit organization North Tipperary Development Company, brought fruit into a room for a weekly meeting designed to build connections between Roscrea residents and newcomers.

“People feel that intimidation,” Ms. O’Donnell-Roche said of the asylum seekers and Ukrainian refugees she works with. “People were messaging me asking, ‘What’s going on? Is this about me?’”

Irish people who emigrated to Britain, the United States and Australia have historically faced hostility, she noted, and many locals empathize with the hardships refugees now face.

On one side of the room, two Ukrainian women in their 70s were hitting a table tennis ball back and forth, laughing as they said they hadn’t played since they were girls. In the next room, three men from Nigeria were playing snooker, a kind of pool, with a man from Pakistan and another from Ukraine. A group of Ukrainian women at a table sang patriotic songs while two Irish women listened attentively.

Savelii Kirov, 37, who fled Ukraine with his wife, said he found most locals welcoming. But he had seen a Facebook page where people had discussed the hotel closure. “Some people wrote incorrect information,” he said. “And that’s hard to see.”

Margaret Ryan, 72, a volunteer who lives near a monastery housing Ukrainian families, said their arrival brought life back to the once empty site. “For 20 years we watched pigeons go in and out of that building,” Ms Ryan said. “Now it is a beautifully illuminated building at night. It lives again.”

She did not necessarily blame those who protested the arrival of the asylum seekers. But “they haven’t met these people or heard their stories yet,” she said, pausing. “If only they knew.”

The group outside Racket Hall said they planned to stay until the government committed to imposing a cap on asylum seekers. Many described a sense of camaraderie that kept them coming back. One man said it was the only thing that had consistently gotten him out of the house since his wife’s death.

They vehemently denied that they were xenophobic or racist. But since the protest began, far-right activists from across Ireland have traveled to Racket Hall and posted livestreams.

On February 5, a group from Roscrea took part in an anti-immigration rally in Dublin, holding a sign that read: ‘This could be the next city of yours.’ The event was organized under the rallying cry ‘Ireland is full’, a phrase coined years ago by a far-right Irish activist that has spread online and amplified by far-right influencers in the United States and Europe.

As this kind of language becomes more common, it inevitably seeps into attitudes and behavior, says Mr. Malone, the researcher. “Where you see an increase in violent rhetoric online, it inevitably plays out on the streets,” he said.