In a strategy seen in many Western countries, Ireland’s government is looking to move more and more migrants into the countryside, with one of the latest schemes focusing on shifting 280 asylum seekers to Dundrum, a village in Tipperary County with a population of only 165.
The move has sparked outrage from the local community, which is embroiled in controversy over the new refugee center. If all migrants are relocated as planned, their population would be 70 percent higher than the local population.
The government plans to convert the Dundrum House hotel into an accommodation complex that will house 280 migrants, with similar plans sparking widespread protests and riots in the Dublin suburb of Coolock just yesterday, with locals there setting fire to construction equipment and battling with police.
Residents expressed shock at the scale of the proposal, and a public meeting to discuss the community’s concerns saw 300 attendees show up from other towns in Tipperary County, according to a report from the Irish Independent.
This controversy also comes after major battles in towns such as Roscrea and Clonmel over large-scale refugee centers, which resulted in headline-grabbing incidents, including several arson attacks on the Clonmel site.
Dundrum residents have called for “common sense” in determining the scale of local accommodation plans. Local politicians are also enraged by the proposal, noting that the town does not have the resources or infrastructure to house so many new people, especially when local services are already stretched to their limit.
Independent city councilor Liam Browne said he was “dismayed” by the lack of communication with residents, while Fine Gael city councilor Declan Burgess described it as “deeply concerning” that the community is kept uninformed.
However, pro-immigration Integration Minister and new Green Party leader Roderic O’Gorman showed no signs of backing down. He said the Department of Integration plans to proceed with the accommodation at the Dundrum House hotel despite local protests.
However, some politicians are noting that as pressure grows in Dublin to house migrants, including large-scale protests, the government appears to be pushing migrants into the countryside.
“We have been saying from the start that there are too many people in too small an area,” Browne told Tipp FM. He criticized the lack of a local needs assessment and the absence of plans for essential services, questioning how families of international protection seekers would integrate, especially concerning childcare and healthcare. “The doctor has already told Dundrum that he will not take on new patients, he simply does not have the capacity to do so.”
“The government seems to think that we have to take these people out of Dublin, bring them down into the country, put them in a rural area… but this is not an effective immigration or asylum-seeking policy. The situation is becoming a real disaster,” he added.
Similar plans are being launched in a wide variety of countries, including France, with local protests there sometimes proving effective against migrant relocation plans. In many cases, the French government looks to transfer large numbers of migrants into isolated towns, with locals voicing concerns about integration, demographic displacement, and severe burdens on local services.
These large-scale pushes to move migrants into the countryside have often been used to support assertions that the Great Replacement is indeed happening in Europe, which posits that native European populations are demographically declining while foreign populations from Asia, Africa, and other nations are slowly displacing Europeans.
