The Irish elite would rather destroy their country than reduce immigration

Bricks, petrol bombs, and fireworks rained down on Irish riot police earlier this week. Each time a missile found its mark, protesters in Coolock, a deprived neighbourhood in north Dublin, erupted in cheers.

Over the past three months, the protest outside what was formerly Coolock’s Crown Paints factory – set to be repurposed to house up to 1,500 asylum seekers – had been mostly peaceful. At times, it swelled to thousands of demonstrators seeking to block work on the disused factory. Locals erected small wooden shacks at the site’s entrance, manned around the clock, with banners declaring “Coolock Says No” and “Irish Lives Matter.”

The protest had succeeded in holding up the work until early Monday morning, when builders arrived escorted by police. Things quickly deteriorated: hundreds of demonstrators converged on the site – some hurled abuse at the police, torched a JCB digger, and set fire to a pile of mattresses. Ireland’s riot squad, in turn, marched forward in a phalanx, beating back and pepper-spraying the crowd. The clash spilled over into nearby council estates, where skirmishes ensued for nearly 24 hours, leaving one security guard needing hospital treatment, several police cars damaged, and 21 people charged so far.

This riot is the latest escalation of political violence in Ireland, with similar scenes in Newtownmountkennedy in April and Dublin last November, aimed at the government’s slapdash immigration policy. After years of crafting policies to attract more asylum seekers from around the world, earning the moniker “Treasure Ireland,” the state has recently been overwhelmed by the number of arrivals: already thin housing and services are being stretched further, especially in small rural towns and poor urban areas like Coolock.

Ireland’s Taoiseach, Simon Harris, was quick to voice his shock at the “sheer thuggery” on display during the riot. But the violence, while never justified, was far from surprising. In 2022, the Irish government received a cabinet memo warning that a large influx of asylum seekers could threaten “social cohesion,” particularly in deprived communities. Little heed was paid to the warning, as ministers proceeded to let in 100,000 Ukrainians and tens of thousands of asylum seekers from the developing world. The increase in arrivals has since been exponential: by June of this year, Ireland has had more than 10,000 non-Ukrainian asylum applicants, a near 100 per cent increase from the same period in 2023, and up 350 per cent from 2019. 

To house the growing number of new arrivals, the government has been scrambling to take over hotels, office spaces and industrial sites, sparking hundreds of peaceful protests across Ireland. Communities were irked by the abrasiveness of the policy: asylum seekers were deposited around the country, often at night and with little notice given to locals, who had no say in the matter. 

Adding insult to injury, the government passed legislation in 2022 enabling it to waive planning laws when accommodating migrants. This means that while a couple must apply to the local council for planning to build a family home in Coolock, the government can repurpose a factory, licensed only for business, to house thousands of foreigners without council permission.

This is a good deal for landlords, who are paid handsomely with taxpayer money (it’s now often more lucrative to house migrants than hotel guests in Ireland). It also works out well for the government, who have a freer hand to place migrants anywhere in the country, thus fulfilling their much-vaunted “international obligations”. They also score a blow against Sinn Fein, their main rivals, who typically enjoy strong support in deprived areas like Coolock and have taken most of the political flak for the government’s enthusiasm for mass migration.

However, local communities are left out to dry. Residents living near the prospective migrant centre in Coolock tell me they have sent hundreds of emails to TDs and government departments objecting to the development, to no avail. Thus stonewalled, the people of Coolock staged a months-long protest to bend the government’s ear, which also proved unsuccessful. So, when the police arrived earlier this week, followed up by Ireland’s kevlar-clad gendarmerie, the frustration was ripe to turn into violence. 

Ireland’s police force, An Garda Síochána, subscribes to the Peel principles of policing by consent. But there is little of that on the ground from communities reluctant to absorb vast numbers of asylum seekers – many of whom seem to be young, male economic migrants – and trust in the police is eroding in certain deprived areas. The government has more than 30 other large buildings in its sights to use as accommodation for asylum seekers, many of which will likely require police enforcement. It is probable that some of these will, like in Coolock, result in violence, further denting community support for the police, who have typically been respected and, unlike in the North, seen as apolitical.

Coolock is one of Ireland’s many left-behind neighbourhoods which are hit hardest by the influx of asylum seekers. The Crown Paints factory used to employ more than a hundred locals before it shut down in 2016 due to cheaper imports from overseas. The area is plagued by unemployment and crime, and locals are anxious about competing with an additional thousand migrants to get a hospital appointment or a school place. 

But most of all, they are concerned about what the migrants will do to the fabric of their community. There are similar stories emerging across Ireland of gangs of young male migrants loitering in parks and on high streets, drinking and accosting women. Many do not speak English, so the government has employed translators to help them adjust to Irish life. 

“We don’t have much, but we have each other,” was a popular refrain in Ireland during harder times. Now, the people of Coolock expect to have even less and will have to share what remains with strangers.