by Bricks, petrol bombs, and fireworks rained down on Irish riot police earlier this week. Every time a missile found its way, protesters cheered in Coolagh, a deprived neighborhood in north Dublin.
For the past three months, the protest outside the Crown Paints Coolock factory – which was to be renovated to accommodate up to 1,500 asylum seekers – has been largely peaceful. At times, thousands of demonstrators trying to block work at the disused factory grew. Locals erected small wooden shacks at the site’s entrance, which were manned around the clock, with banners declaring “Coolock Says No” and “Irish Lives Matter”.
The protest managed to hold up the work until early Monday morning, when the builders arrived accompanied by the police. Things quickly deteriorated: hundreds of demonstrators gathered on the site – some were abused by the police, torched a JCB digger, and set a pile of mattresses on fire. The Irish riot squad, next, advanced in a palanx, hitting back and spraying the crowd. The pit spilled into a nearby council estate, where skirmishes took place for almost 24 hours, which left one security guard needing hospital treatment, several police cars damaged, and 21 people accused so far.
The riot is the latest upsurge in political violence in Ireland, with similar scenes in Kennedy Town in April and Dublin last November centered on the government’s slapdash immigration policy. After years of devising policies to attract more asylum seekers from around the world, earning them the moniker “Treasure Ireland”, the state has recently been overwhelmed by the number of arrivals: housing and thin services are already being stretched further, especially in small rural towns. and poor urban areas such as Cullog.
Ireland’s Taoiseach, Simon Harris, was quick to express his dismay at the “total debauchery” on display during the riot. But the violence was hardly surprising, although it was never justified. In 2022, the Irish government received a cabinet memo warning that a large influx of asylum seekers could threaten “social integration”, particularly in deprived communities. The warning went largely unheeded, with ministers proceeding to admit 100,000 Ukrainians and thousands of asylum seekers from the developing world. The number of admissions has increased exponentially since then: by June this year, Ireland had more than 10,000 non-Ukrainian asylum applicants, an increase of almost 100 percent from the same period in 2023, and a 350 percent increase from 2019.
To house the growing number of new entrants, the government is trying to commandeer hotels, office spaces and industrial sites, prompting hundreds of peaceful protests across Ireland. The harshness of the policy affected communities: asylum seekers were deposited all over the country, often at night and without much notice to the local people, who had no say in the matter.
Adding insult to injury, the government passed legislation in 2022 that enabled it to waive planning laws while housing migrants. This means that, while a couple must apply to the local council to plan to build a family home in Coolock, the government can re-use a factory, which is licensed for business only, to house thousands of foreigners without permission from the council.
This is a good deal for landlords, paid handsomely with taxpayers’ money (now often more profitable for domestic migrants than hotel guests in Ireland). It also works well for the government, who have a freer hand to place migrants anywhere in the country, which fulfills their dubious “international obligations”. They also scored a blow against Sinn Féin, their main rivals, who are usually strongly supported in deprived areas such as Cúlóg and have taken most of the political blame for the government’s enthusiasm for mass migration.
However, local communities are left out to dry. Residents living near the potential migrant center in Coolock tell me they have sent hundreds of emails to MPs and government departments opposing the development, to no avail. So with stone walls, the people of Cúloge protested for a month to bend the ear of the government, which was also unsuccessful. So when the police arrived earlier this week, followed by Ireland’s kevlar-clad gendarmerie, frustration could turn violent.
The Irish police force, An Garda Síochána, adheres to Peel’s principles of policing by consent. But there is little of that on the ground from communities reluctant to absorb large numbers of asylum seekers – many of whom appear to be young male economic migrants – and trust in the police is eroding in some deprived areas. The government has more than 30 other large buildings for use as accommodation for asylum seekers, many of which are likely to require police enforcement. Some of these, as in Coolagh, are likely to result in violence, further eroding community support for the police, who have generally been respected and, unlike in the North, seen as apolitical.
Cullog is one of the neighborhoods left behind in Ireland most affected by the influx of asylum seekers. The Crown Paints factory used to employ more than a hundred local people before it closed in 2016 due to cheaper imports from overseas. The area has been hit by unemployment and crime, and locals are worried about competing with a thousand more migrants to get a hospital appointment or a school place.
But above all, they are concerned about what the migrants will do for the benefit of their community. Similar stories are emerging across Ireland about gangs of young male migrants loitering in parks and high streets, drinking and seizing women. Many of them do not speak English, so the government has hired translators to help them get used to life in Ireland.
“We don’t have much, but we have each other,” was common in Ireland during more difficult times. Now, the people of Cúlóge expect to have even less and will have to share what is left with strangers.
