Garda Commissioner Drew Harris who describes himself as 'the UK lead for hate crime for eight years' says he looks forward to using his prior experience developing a lot of British policies in implementing Minister Helen McEntee's new hate speech laws.

🔗 pressreader.com | Irish Daily Mail

The Red Cross is very concerned that asylum seekers presenting as Ukrainian but without any proof will be turned back to where they came from. 🤔

On asylum seekers arriving at Dublin airport:

"We have noticed that an increasing number of people who...ehhm-err...came from Ukraine but they did not have the correct passport stamped facility..."

How does Liam O'Dwyer know they came from Ukraine so?

The NGO-left are right to some extent about Ukrainian refugees being treated differently because they're white. You won't see a headline like that about any non-white migrant group.

>He said the open door policy will cost Ireland ‘hundreds of millions of euro’ which, he claimed, is a ‘gross underestimate’ of the real costs....we cannot be bullied into silence by a loudly manipulative minority of political elites.’

How many millions of euro has been flushed down the toilet catering to predominantly fake refugees from Nigeria for the past 25 years but nobody has batted an eyelid?

🔗 southernstar.ie

Nothing to say about the NGOs who work towards the elimination of Ireland as the national homeland of the Irish people though.

This NGO Monitor crowd could possibly have a particular bias...🤔

From The Phoenix | 15 July 2022 edition.

They've been releasing some figures about asylum in the last couple of days.

The rate of asylum seekers coming into the country has surged to around 150 a day now. That's one #Kinnegad per day.

7,000 asylum seekers have arrived since the beginning of the year on top of the 41,000 "people from Ukraine".

13,917 asylum applicants are currently being accommodated in Direct Provision. Roderic O'Gorman told the UN it was 13,000 on July 4th.

The City West Hotel is currently full. Taoiseach Micheál Martin says 70% of the residents are non-Ukrainian asylum seekers.

If your remember the State leased it for two years to house 2,000 Ukrainians originally.

Martin is continuing to blame the UK's Rwanda policy (which has stalled) while ignoring the government's promise of free homes for all asylum seekers within four months of arrival and McEntee's recent blanket amnesty for illegals & failed asylum seekers, as well as their limitless open invite to "people from Ukraine".

The Mail reports that the government last night agreed to introduce a fast-track deportation system for asylum seekers arriving from ‘safe’ countries of origin.

I regret to inform you that's bullshit.

What they're doing with this statement is hoping it will have a chilling effect on asylum seekers thinking of making the trip here.

🔗 pressreader.com | Irish Daily Mail

🤔 🔗 twitter.com

They're only counting people from Ukraine here (or at least people who say that's where they're from). As the Secretary General of the Irish Red Cross admitted recently, not everyone has the proof.

>Tánaiste Leo Varadkar said there are no plans to cap the number of Ukrainian refugees arriving into the country, suggesting we are not yet taking in our fair share.

>He said that Ireland has not taken as many displaced Ukrainians as other countries on a comparative basis and that, even with the system for receiving refugees now full, EU rules would not allow for limits to be placed.

>"This is part of European law. So it's actually not in our authority, in any case, to limit the numbers that are coming from Ukraine," said Mr Varadkar.

Joe Duffy once remarked to Áine Ní Chonaill that 'we don't own the country'. He was right, you know.

🔗 irishexaminer.com

>He said that Ireland is reactionary in dealing with the arrival of people seeking international protection, instead of planning ahead. Mr Khambule warned that people will end up sleeping on the streets because they will have nowhere else to go.

Bit like Irish people so.

🔗 twitter.com

Harry's Restaurant in #Kinnegad is to cease trading on Sunday.

If you remember, this restaurant was the first to blow the whistle on the trouble in the town. They share the same building as the hotel but are not associated with it.

Locals are understandably very upset in the replies. It's a loss of 17 jobs too.

🔗 facebook.com

Derek Blighe is in Courtown, Wexford where more male asylum seekers have been dumped at a hotel.

He did very well here explaining some facts about the asylum system to some local women.

Up to 90% of asylum applications are rejected yet few are ever deported. If an asylum seeker appeals the decision to reject their application and remains in the country for five years, they are granted an automatic right to stay.

👇🏻

Court town has a fakeugee problem.

This is RTÉ's news item about the #Kinnegad community meeting last Monday. Nothing remarkable in it, but I'm going to upload audio for the full meeting in a bit so you can compare their coverage of the meeting to what actually happened at it.

Kinnegad Community Meeting | 11 July 2022

The audio is hit & miss in this so I'm going to provide a lot of timestamps below to make it easier to understand what's being said.

0:00 - Cllr. Denis Leonards begins the meeting.

1:05 - "This is not in relation to the national debate"

2:10 - He laments social media relating to Kinnegad being used to debate national issues on asylum.

2:24 - "Owner of hotel has signed a 12 month contract for temporary emergency accommodation". He says there's 75 asylum seekers there currently but it's contracted to house up to 150.

3:06 - "There was a small amount of behaviour which was whipped up in the first weekend. It's been investigated, and all those responsible have been reported and have been dealt with accordingly the way anybody is in Kinnegad" (Admits multiple reports to the Gardaí)

4:20 - Cllr Leonard wants to advocate for reducing "the six month waiting period for genuine asylum seekers," whatever he thinks that means.

5:08 - Cllr Leonard says he's asked for local TDs to be present at a meeting with IPAS officials "because this is a national issue." (I thought you said it wasn't a minute ago, Denis?)

10:00 - The steering committee begin their remarks with one woman (suspected NGO associate) immediately confronting Justin Barrett & National Party presence. She says nobody appreciated the leaflet drop in the town last week.

10:12 - Justin Barrett replies "nobody?"

10:20 - Philip Dwyer begins his remarks and requests two minutes to speak.

12:20 - Philip Dwyer leaves.

12:54 - Committee woman resumes speaking — 'this is about our community and people from war-torn countries etc'

14:17 - A committee woman (suspected Sinn Féin associate) starts speaking. She says they asked Peter Burke (Westmeath Fine Gael TD) for a liaison worker for the migrants, emphasised lack of amenities and support. The asylum seekers are only in the country 20 days.

15:30 - A woman from the crowd starts speaking. She says if there's trouble in the hotel their kids are still at risk.

16:20 - She says her 15 year old stepdaughter witnessed brawls in the bar & restaurant adjoining the hotel and had to speak to the gardaí. She believes its all a money making racket. Someone else points out the hotel owners are on holiday for 3 weeks (nobody in the crowd seemed to know who owned the hotel)

16:42 - Steering committee woman on far left of table starts speaking. She invited the asylum seekers to the meeting. She says they've been here for 20 days and moved four times since they've arrived in Ireland. They have nothing to do in Kinnegad.

18:00 - She says they are ashamed over things being said about them on social media.

18:40 - She says people need to get to know "these gentlemen" — 'We don't know what they've been through. There was bad eggs in this community before they arrived but we know who they were and were able to tackle them ourselves.'

19:32 - A woman in the crowd complains that when the asylum seekers arrived "everybody was in danger for five to six days and no-one gave a shit". She says she did not feel safe walking down her bothrín.

19:50 - A committee woman talks about there being no consultation process. They aired their concerns to Longford-Westmeath TDs as well as Roderic O'Gorman, who couldn't give her an answer and "admitted he was wrong".

20:21 - A man from the crowd says he got a letter from O'Gorman saying there's still 75 new asylum seekers going in that night. He goes on to say the week of problems they experienced due to 'lack of facilities' will repeat and the present asylum seekers don't want any more arriving too. He says women are going to feel more threatened walking down the street. The women at the table agree.

21:54 - The man is resigned to the hotel accommodating the present 75 asylum seekers but doesn't want any more. "They're not going to get shipped out but we cannot take another 75."

22:26 - Cllr Leonard says there's been no confirmation of another 75 asylum seekers arriving tonight, but that doesn't mean it's not going to happen although he has asked Roderic O'Gorman to put a hold on them arriving through intermediaries.

23:08 - "IPAS have given this guy (the hotelier) the money...if we get rid of this 75, they'll be another 75 in."

23:41 - Steering committee woman says the present asylum seekers are only just settling in now - "the arguments (between them) are slowing down which means the groups are beginning to naturally segregate which is what needed to happen because they were shoving them all in to rooms together...we can't have a rotation of this for the year."

24:15 - Man from crowd says it shouldn't be called temporary accommodation because it's a median housing contract (3-6 months). He believes after 6 months the asylum seekers will get processed and can then either leave and get a job or request to be moved to another asylum centre but more will be moved in. (Bit of backlog on processing applications this year though...)

25:10 - Denis Leonard announces Question Time.

25:30 - Man in crowd asks why the migrants were moved around Ireland multiple times already. He gets told they were moved to accommodate Ukrainian refugees. They started off in Cork, then were moved to Red Cow, then Citywest, now Kinnegad.

26:05 - Same man asks if those migrants involved in incidents on social media involving women & children were "dealt with". The women admit two were involved in incidents, Cllr Leonard says that they were "moved on" elsewhere in the country.

26:27 - A man in the crowd says he was told one was arrested and one was taken out of the hotel. He asked the Garda Sergeant if that was the same person or two different people and she couldn't tell them. He doesn't know if it's one person or a group causing the trouble.

26:44 - Cllr Leonard says he talked to the Garda Superintendent that morning and was told that "three of them in total were dealt with, some with reports, some were moved for antisocial behaviour, "the way any of us would be dealt with for anti-social behaviour."

27:18 - A man in the crowd asks if the hotel has permission to convert to a Direct Provision centre (a specific planning permission exemption was introduced in 2015 for hotels to accommodate asylum seekers in perpetuity)

27:32 - There's 45 rooms in the hotel but one woman says she heard they're sleeping in extra function rooms to accommodate the high numbers.

27:45 - Woman in crowd asks if this will be a continuous yearly contract. Leonard brings in his friend Jimmy O'Connell to answer the question which isn't much of one.

29:12 - We hear from a man in the crowd that Intel employees were staying at the hotel but were told they had to move out by the Wednesday before the asylum seekers were moved in on Thursday.

30:20 - One of the steering committee women says the owner of Harry's Hotel has three or four other hotels where he's doing the exact same thing.

30:30 - A woman remarks that the reason she believes it's all men in the hotel is because they can cram more of them into each room so it's more profitable.

30:38 - One of the steering committee women says she wants to find out who in the Dept. of Equality is responsible for evaluating premises for use by asylum seekers — "I know how government procurement works. I deal with it every day".

31:16 - Someone has a go at the NP, thanking Cllr Denis Leonard for asking members of the National Party (mistaking Phil Dwyer as National Party) to leave, even though Justin Barrett is still in the room — "They must be sickened to their feet to hear from the top table how welcoming Kinnegad is as a community....we have great confidence in our local representatives, our TDS, our ministers..."

32:50 - Justin begins to respond — "it was said to be entirely about Kinnegad but then you make it about us". He is interrupted by the steering committee who shout over him and refuse to let him continue — "I was directly addressed!".

33:15 - Elderly woman in crowd asks "With 75 immigrants coming into our Country, how safe are our children & women in this town?". A local man interjects "They're not safe" and a committee woman agrees "No, they're not," but quickly adds "If it was 75 Irishmen, they still wouldn't be safe."

33:32 - The committee woman (suspected NGO associate) wants to get "the full documentation waiting time" reduced from 6 months to 3 months "for our group". What she's confusing the crowd about here is the scheme called 'Labour Market Access Permission'. If an asylum seeker's application has not been rejected within 6 months of making it, they are allowed to work and continue working if they subsequently are rejected but appeal the decision.

33:51 - The uselessness of the vetting process is outlined.

34:15 - Admits some of them will not be genuine refugees (try most).

34:44 - Steering committee women tells the crowd if they see absolutely any suspicious activity to report it to the gardaí. Extra resources are being put into Kinnagad and they will investigate it. They'd prefer to discover someone was just being overly cautious than not be called.

35:42 - Cllr Leonard claims asylum seekers don't want to step out of line as it would mean their application is null & void and "they are in many cases sent back". This isn't true.

35:59 - Cllr Leonard downplays the significance of the anti-social incidents reported on social media, says the number of incidents actually reported to the gardaí is miniscule.

36:45 - Local woman in crowd speaks about not being able to walk down a bothrín by herself.

37:34 - A man from the crowd speaks who would later walk out of the meeting and was probably the only local there with some backbone. He calls out the defeatism of the steering committee and criticises them for being concerned about the welfare of the asylum seekers over the welfare of the people of Kinnegad. He gets interrupted by one of the women at the table who declares the only way to fight back is on a humanitarian angle, to see if the hotel owner has broken their contract and duty of care towards the asylum seekers. She also mentions the horror of there not being an NGO present when the migrants arrived. The man asks if a protest could be a good route but immediately gets shut down.

41:57 - The man points out the incongruity of the committee claiming to be pushing back against the DP centre in town while simultaneously accepting 75 more asylum seekers.

42:23 - Cllr Leonard's friend Jimmy O'Connell steps in to finger-wag at John Coyle — "We have to do this in the proper way. We can't bad-mouth these men."

43:04 - Cllr Leonard asks for questions from the crowd to be put to government ministers & IPAS.

44:20 - Cllr Leonard laments the planning permission exemption which was introduced in 2015 allowing hotels to accommodate asylum seekers in perpetuity. The former leader of his own Labour Party, Alan Kelly, was responsible for introducing the legislation incidentally.

45:10 - Steering committee woman says we have to go "the humanitarian route" in opposing the asylum seekers being accommodated at the hotel — it isn't good enough for them etc.

47:38 - Steering committee woman wants any amenities laid on for the asylum seekers to be made available to Kinnegad residents. Good luck.

48:36 - An Australian woman living in Kinnegad for 20 years asks if county councils are regularly bypassed on issues like this. She asks why nobody saw this coming when the hotelier owns two other hotels which he is using to accommodate asylum seekers.

49:48 - Steering committee woman replies that Sinn Féin TD Sorcha Clarke from Mullingar told her that "no county council is taken into consideration for any direct provision centre", though we knew this already.