‘Outsiders’ headed to Roscrea last night to ‘cause problems’ as asylum seekers arrived in the town, a journalist reporting on the protest has said.

Following last week’s announcement that asylum seekers would be housed in the Tipperary town’s Racket Hall Hotel, unhappy locals have been demonstrating daily against the decision. 

Last night, over a dozen asylum seekers moved into the hotel and a further 140 more expected to arrive in the coming weeks. 

Irish Examiner journalist Allison O’Reilly witnessed the arrival of the asylum seekers and said the reaction was “deeply distressing”. 

“Nobody wants to see that,” she told Newstalk Breakfast.

“Nobody wants to see women carrying little babies trying to get through a crowd like. 

“Gardaí formed this starting line and then the protestors formed a line and there was scuffles and pushing and shouting. 

“Women were just in fear of trying to get in there.” 

Ms O’Reilly also spoke to the protestors and said there was a deep sense of “frustration”, with many people angry and upset about what is happening to their town. 

“Roscrea is a town of around 6,000 people and they believe… that they’ve had their fair share of asylum seekers coming in,” she said. 

“This will be the third lot coming in and they are overstretched for Gardaí, for dentists, GPs.  

“They just feel this is going to be a huge pressure on their services.”

'Out for the violence and the aggression'

The anti-asylum seeker protest is now being held around the clock but Ms O’Reilly said it is not exclusively locals who are taking part in it and some had travelled to the town to “rile people up”. 

“There’s no denying that people are coming out for the violence and the aggression and causing problems,” she said. 

“There are absolutely people there with genuine fear and concerns; [they’re] afraid of job losses, pressures on their services. 

“Then there are people arriving in their carload to egg these people on - both on social media and the ground.”

Consultation

Previously, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has described it is “important that we consult our communities” when asylum seekers move into an area. 

Despite this, Ms O’Reilly said she felt the level of communication between officials and local communities has worsened over time. 

“I’ve been covering these protests since they began in East Wall [in late 2022] and I’ve seen a massive change in these [protests],” she said. 

“[It used to be] people gathering outside centres looking for answers, looking to speak to somebody, looking for direction, total frustration and fear to nobody properly engaging with them.”

There are roughly 80,000 Ukrainians living in Ireland and in 2022, there were 13,651 international protection applications lodged in the country. 

Main image: Roscrea protest. Picture by: Newstalk.