Irish authorities begin clearing ‘shanty town’ of asylum seekers

Mount Street where the tents were erected was closed to traffic with barriers blocking both ends of the street on Wednesday morning. Uniformed police, council officials and coaches to move the asylum seekers were at the scene, the Irish Independent reported.

Long lines of people waited patiently next to a convoy of at least five buses parked in the middle of the street, waiting to be moved on as dawn broke in Dublin.

In the early hours, police blocked off Mount Street in central Dublin and erected metal railings to keep pedestrians away while they carry out their operation outside the International Protection Office.

Vans loaded with metal barriers lined the street as men in white hazmat suits and face masks untied the tents and dragged them to the side of the kerb. Each tent was sprayed with a red X to mark them as evicted.

“It’s also really important that we don’t see scenes like we’re seeing now at Mount Street again, that it cannot re-emerge, that we have hundreds of tents – not just outside the international protection office – but outside people’s homes, outside people’s businesses,” said Helen McEntee, the justice minister, on Tuesday night.