This piece has been updated with a response from the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration, and Youth received on the 7/12/2023.
A family of five from Bangladesh were given their own apartment in Co. Westmeath only hours after arriving in the State according to Senator Sharon Keogan.
I received a call from an area in Westmeath where a family travelled from Bangladesh, flew into Belfast Airport last week, travelled down to Dublin to IPAS and were given their OWN front door for a NEW 3-bed apartment. They had resided in the UK for some time before travelling.… https://t.co/ZWoAMIpNd9
— Senator Sharon Keogan (@SenatorKeogan) December 4, 2023
According to documentation from the Department of Justice, which has been seen by Gript, the family arrived in Ireland on the 28th of November after spending 25 days in the UK and travelling to Dublin via Belfast.
The documents also note that the family left their country of origin on 11/10/2023 and that their entry into Ireland was “illegal”.
Locals in Coole, Co. Westmeath who have been holding protests at the site of 12 refurbished apartments which have been leased to the International Protection Accommodation Service (IPAS) told Gript they met the family on their arrival at the facility last Tuesday the 28th of November.
A local woman who is part of the group of concerned residents known collectively as ‘Coole Concerns’ told Gript that at about 6:30 that evening a taxi had ferried the family to the site of a newly refurbished housing development in the area.
The woman said locals were holding a ‘peaceful protest’ when the family arrived.
A man who was part of the protest at the time told Gript a small group of about 5 – 7 locals had seen the taxi which he described as a “caddy” like vehicle drive into the complex and that a series of banging noises followed.
The taxi then left the area with some of the protestors deciding to investigate the source of the sounds.
The man said he saw the family enter into the lobby of a GP’s office where the lights were still on but that a lady inside had shown them out “presumably because the surgery was closed for the evening.”
The man said that when the family emerged from the GP’s office the father approached the locals looking for help.
Witnesses say the man had ‘little English’ and produced documents from the Department of Justice telling the protestors that his family had arrived in Belfast before travelling to Dublin and that they had been sent from an office in Dublin to the area by taxi.
The documents purported to be from the Department of Justice and said that the family had arrived in Ireland from the UK on the 28th of November – which is the same date as their asylum application was lodged.
Locals have described the village of Coole as being home to around 200 people “on a good weekend” saying that there is little in the way of amenities and that Government plans to house 98 asylum seekers in the village are ‘unreasonable’.
Gript contacted the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration, and Youth asking how long it takes international applicants to be housed from the time of application.
We also asked if it is the policy of the Department of Integration to house families in ‘own door’ accommodation such as houses or apartments.
DCEDIY said, “International Protection (IP) applicants are accommodated in IPAS centres, Emergency centres, the National Reception Centre, and tented accommodation.”
“In face of the significant shortfall in available accommodation, the International Protection Procurement Service (IPPS) has contracted a significant amount of private accommodation of various configurations. Emergency accommodation is provided to IP applicants in a variety of settings, including guest houses, apartment, hostels, and hotels.”
“Despite intensive efforts to source emergency accommodation, the Department is currently not in a position to provide accommodation to all international protection applicants due to the severe shortage of accommodation. Department officials are working to bring more bed spaces into use, and since January 2022 have brought over 10,000 bed spaces into use to accommodate those who arrive in Ireland seeking International Protection (IP).”
“The State has a legal obligation to assess the claims of those who seek IP, and in that time, to provide accommodation and supports in line with the Recast Reception Conditions Directive (SI 230 of 2018), to those that require it.”
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I’m in Belfast, UK! Can I get an apartment in Westmeath???
If you don’t give it to me I’m going to the MSM and claiming you lot down there are racist against Northerners’
Sorry bud, as a southern prod, I can happily say that there are no racists or far right down here only concerned citizens that our Republic is being over run.
4 hours since I posted that comment & I’ve still not received the keys to an apartment in Westmeath
For over two years I have posted on Gript with only a single comment not accepted.
Now suddenly, I have had a variety of carefully and cautiously written posts
blocked with “Awaiting for approval” which is not granted.
I find this distrubing. Have other commenters had the same experience?
Tried to reply. No luck.
I have had this experience about three times recently. Not sure if Gript is blocking them, though, because they are blocked straight off without anyone having had time to even look at them.
I have rephrased comments and avoided words that may be targeted and that did not help. I am a little surprised that this criticism will probably go through without the “Awaiting for approval.” I hope this is only a glitch because Gript is virtually the only media outlet in Ireland that allows discussion and dissenting views. I hope government pressure does not force them to c . n s . r comments
Yes, it’s probably a program doing that. My comment was innocuous. It would be nice if someone reviewed the comments after the bot or program stops them. But maybe they don’t have time.
I think it may be the case that there isn’t a human moderator available.
The only time I’ve been censored, is when I’ve mentioned “Epsteins Island”
I sent Gript an email abut this a while back.Maria responded straight away and said ‘Sometimes if the post is too long, has links to certain words, WP itself has its own blocker on comments’.
Maria said she would see if she could sort it out and within minutes the comment was posted.
It is still happening to me but I only ever contacted them once.
The problem seems to me to be that if a comment is auto-blocked and auto-referred for approval there does not seem to be a follow up procedure for checking and releasing the comment for posting.
It happened to me again this morning on a very neutral and non-controversial comment.
It would be best for everyone that has it happen to them to contact Gript . At least then they will realise there is a systemic problem and they can fix it. It would be such a shame if very good commenters like yourself became demotivated by this frustrating issue and didn’t bother any longer.
That might even already have happened with some good commenters so it really is best to let them know rather than have good content disappear.
Thanks Eamonn.
We desperately need more platforms where plebs like ourselves can ask hard questions that the media and politicians routinely refuse to answer or discuss. We need good governance, law and order so should be allowed to call out the failures of our politicians to promote these.
We need more platforms but are unlikely to get them. Once his excellency michaleen beag signs the hate speech bill the attack on the dissenters will be instantaneous. The MSM will have their exposes running followed by a few hit pieces on RTE the the calls for action in the Dail by a few green ministers back up by back benchers from other parties. Then Harris and his minions will get to work.
He knows what’s coming. That’s why the editor has to be careful.
I hope you prove to be wrong because sometimes politicians and mainstream media fall into the traps they set for others.
Also, perhaps the site is a victim of its own success, as there are more commenters and the server isn’t keeping up?
Whilst a lot of the great commenters are still around there are some great ones I haven’t seen for a while and I miss their input . I hope their absence is not due to frustration at this technical issue .
Without taking anything away from some of my many favourite commenters I have to send a special appeal to the wonderful Hugh Gibney . Hugh please come back.
Same.
Yes, same here.
I get blocked occasionally but then again I tend to shoot from the hip. For instance I am not allowed to call his excellency Michael D Higgins the world most expensive Lepre****n.
In the event of the “cage fighter” campaigning for president, would he be censored and persecuted like President Trump is in America?
second time on here and comment took 10 seconds to post so works for me.
It’s an intermittent problem.
Nice 1 Pa .. excellent question !
As a tax payer and indigenous to ireland when can I expect my free house
Yes, indigenous. Throw this word around more. People, at least in the US, don’t seem to understand there are indigenous peoples of Europe. Their view is that you and your culture are bad and deserve to be demolished.
You Irish need to get a handle on this ASAP or your country as you have known it is finished.
Unfortunately, due to the fact the UK is no longer a member of the EU, and as I understand it a suitable alternative to the Dublin Regulation on asylum was not negotiated during Brexit, it is unclear to me if their entry into Ireland from the UK was ‘illegal’ or not — certainly any sensible person is entitled to see it as unreasonable, since if their interest is asylum, i.e. a safe country to seek refuge, and they are from Bangladesh, then the UK works just as well for that as Ireland — as would any of a number of countries on their route.
Yes. Aren’t those seeking asylum supposed to ask for it in the first country they can get to that is safe?
Yes, they are supposed to ask in first country. It is not happening and the rule is not applied. They are not ‘fleeing’ anything but the government tries to say they are. Terry, I sent you a reply under the topic, ‘A very bad poll for the political class on immigration, Dec 4’. I hope the reply tries to shed a little light on it. All the European countries have swung to the right and are putting huge restrictions on immigration now. Ireland is inviting them in. Leo Varadker has stated recently that immigration is good, a reaffirmation of what his policy, in case we have forgotten. Government acting against the people here.
The situation is not as straightforward as you think — there is no legally enforceable requirement that they apply for asylum in the nearest or first safe country they enter — this is the purpose of ‘safe third country’ agreements in asylum law — the Dublin Regulation is an EU-wide ‘safe third country’ agreement on asylum, one designed to make this kind of cherry-picking illegal — the 2015 asylum crisis in Central Europe was triggered when Merkel said Germany would not enforce the Dublin Regulation on its border, so other countries just let the migrants transit to Germany — the US has a ‘safe third country’ agreement with Canada, meaning any third country asylum seeker (i.e. not a Canadian) entering the US from Canada can be legally pushed back into Canada and told to apply for asylum there — however the US has no such ‘safe third country’ agreement with Mexico (it was discussed during the Trump administration), which is why the US has a huge asylum problem on its southern border — Mexico can and does allow these migrants to transit its territory on their way to the US border — there is no legal way to force Mexico to stop doing that, and there is no legal way to push anyone seeking asylum back into Mexico.
Thanks, eah, you are educating me on these intricacies.
Doesn’t really matter about legal or illegal. We have open borders and they can cross without any passport. Straight ahead. Passports can be fake anyway and no way of finding out if the person on the passport is genuine or rogue. All accepted.
Thanks for the replies; I will look at the other reply. This is a shame. I am truly baffled by these decisions in such a country as small as Ireland and one that battled so hard for self-determination. I know all this would upset my fellow Irish Americans if they knew about it or understood it. Many or most don’t. Current trends in Ireland have not been widely publicized here, although the riot in Dublin got a flash of attention. Our image of Ireland is always behind the reality.
You are ruled by people who fear the media more than they fear or care about the electorate — the same is true throughout the West, where a kind of secular moral absolutism has largely replaced religion in public life — it is the media who determine the secular moral canon, which today above all includes anti-racism, as well as a kind of militant belief in racial egalitarianism, globalism, and anti-nationalism.
And the new religion of environmentalism.
You say you are baffled by these decisions in such a small country as Ireland and one that battled so hard for self-determination.
I can shed some light on that for you. There’s always been a minority of the Irish population who were never particularly enthusiastic about independence from Britain. That was the case when most of Ireland became a free state in 1922 and unfortunately these people are still amongst us.
They are just people who are not even a tiny bit patriotic. You have similar beings in the USA.
Ireland’s problem is that your government has decided to participate in the EU migrant quota and distribution scheme — Hungary, also Poland and the Czech Republic, refuse to participate — the Orban government in Hungary is particularly adamant about this, to the point Hungary ignores EU court decisions against its asylum policies — despite a lot of threats and big talk, also the fact Hungary is still a net recipient of EU aid, there have been no serious consequences for Hungary — Ireland needs a government that cares as much about Ireland and the Irish as the Orban government cares about Hungary and Hungarians — Hungary has shown it is possible to defy the EU on migrants — if enough EU countries did the same, the policy would become untenable, also increasingly the EU itself, since any reasonable person can see that there isn’t much ‘European’ about an EU that attempts to force its members to accept infinity third world migrants — Ireland needs an AfI (Alternative for Ireland) party that will push the migration question hard — this is an existential issue for Ireland.
Yes, but is this likely to happen? I would hope the Irish people are less concerned about what people think of them than the fate of their own country. People are so afraid of appearing racist or unkind that that commit national suicide. But this is primarily tribal in my view, not racist, in any case. If they tell you you are racist, laugh in their faces and say your concern for hundreds of years was retrieving the country from the white British. You don’t want to give it away to anyone! Anyone. Or say nothing at all; don’t dignify the insults that are their primary weapon. Forgive me for going on.
Also, why would Sinn Fein support all this? I thought that was Ourselves Alone and the purpose of all that was for you to control your island.
>Yes, but is this likely to happen?
I cannot speak of likelihood, but I can speak of what to me is necessity — in my view, an AfI is necessary as I don’t think any, or enough (considering possible coalitions), establishment parties will be willing to go against the media promoted consensus — it is simply not in their interest, and this is what they are most concerned about, not what is good for Ireland and the Irish — remember: Merkel was head of the ruling CDU in 2015, the nominally ‘conservative’ party in Germany, and yet it was her government that opened the borders to migrants — observing German politics, I think a ‘no confidence’ vote in Merkel could never have succeeded because the Greens, the worst and most radical party on these questions, would have supported her — due to fear of being called ‘racist’ or ‘neo-Nazi’ in the media, there is essentially no conservative party left in Germany, other than the AfD.
Also remember: the AfD only began in 2013, but was already the largest non-governing party after the 2017 election — their poll numbers are even stronger now, to the point it may soon be impossible for the other establishment parties to maintain their boycott against forming coalitions with the AfD — so it can happen more quickly than you might imagine.
Ireland has a small population, so you don’t have much time.
RE: Ireland’s problem is that your government has decided to participate in the EU migrant quota and distribution scheme.
Yes. Bail on this or maybe bail on the whole EU. Perhaps the Irish people don’t realize the potential consequences of just letting anyone in, or letting in people from broken down cultures or cultures that are not compatible. They may be naive to this and trying to be nice. Look at what happened to Minneapolis. A few decades back, that city prided itself on being one of the few big cities in the US without epic levels of violent crime. Then they invited 100,000+ Somalis to move to Minnesota, who came from a country that had long since devolved into total anarchy and brutality. Now Minneapolis is dealing with such serious crime and gangs that it’s making headlines in India (Alarming surge in serious juvenile crimes grips Twin Cities Minneapolis–Saint Paul, reads a headline in the Times of India). Do you want no-go areas in your cities?
Many Irish people are not aware of the negatives of immigration. The government are indirectly running a huge propaganda campaign that immigration, diversity, multiculturalism are good. It is promoted in schools along with transgender etc. They are promoting the idea that those who object are far right, racist etc. and have dangerous ideas that are to be feared. The media are smug, clap happy immigrant enthusiasts. SF are a mass immigration open borders party. Many people are unaware that immigrant policy goes directly against them and their interests. Nearly two gang rapes per day in Germany in 2021. Minnesota is a warning not to take that route.
Thanks again for explaining the reasons, although I knew about Hungary from long ago. Much less about Ireland because of its secrets. Was Ireland obliged to sign that thing? Why is Denmark, Holland etc getting away with their policies? Wilders of Holland said that the Dutchman will get his country back. We have a tough government, tough nuts there who tell us we are causing division and hatred if we object and of course the far right label too. The ground is being taken from under our feet but they expect us to pretend we don’t notice. Never.
>Was Ireland obliged to sign that thing?
Ireland could refuse the migrants, as Hungary does — what power does the EU have? — they have no army, they cannot invade you — all they can do is attempt to punish you with policy, laws, and courts — but Hungary has shown you can just ignore all that — regarding a critical mass of EU nations doing the same, think of the potential scenario: one half of the EU trying to force the other half to accept infinity third world migrants — the utter absurdity of it would be obvious to everyone — it would be the end of the EU as it now exists, and that would be a good thing.
Hungary has shown the way — Ireland could follow — but you need Irish politicians who are unafraid, and willing to stand up the media and do what is right for Ireland.
The CTA is freedom of movement between Irish and British citizens only. So anyone without an Irish/British passport shouldn’t be allowed to leave the UK or to enter Ireland without the relevant documents.
You have to skip over the other safe countries if you want the best benefits, which is Ireland.
They had their penultimate stop with their colonisers. Didn’t fancy that no doubt.Now they are colonisers themselves. Irony of ironies. Our grandparents and ancestors eight hundred year struggle. For what? LAUGHING STOCK PADDY
Can Ireland not cap immigration? And let visas or permits expire?
Yes Ireland can restrict inward immigration as they have done for several years previously. This would be the sensible thing to do in a housing crisis if our government were not corrupt putting the needs of Irish people second to the importation of people from foreign lands.
What about the EU? I suppose I could look this up but perhaps people here can fill me in. Does being in the EU not subject Ireland to some immigration that the country has no choice but to accept? What about visas or residency permits? Can they be allowed to expire to lower the number of foreign nationals in the country? It’s eye-popping that the country has a 20 percent foreign-born population. That percentage will surely rise over time, perhaps markedly.
Need to verify that they got an apartment on arrival…that sounds a bit suspect. A trap to spring on the ” far right”
I heard it yesterday. It was put in the public domain by a Senator in Seanad Eireann so it looks to be true
Yes, this has happened and it is not an isolated case. It is happening all the time. New or refurbished houses and apartments are being contracted out by private owners to the Dept. Of Children, for enormous sums of money, and being used to accommodate newly arrived IPAs, regardless of their background or where they have come from.
Never mind,it’s all good????