Ireland ‘asleep at the wheel’ on immigration, says senator

Ireland is “asleep at the wheel” on immigration, an Irish senator from a town where one in 100 are asylum seekers has said.

Niall Blaney is running in June’s European elections to represent a Donegal constituency which is taking in twice the national average of asylum seekers in Ireland.

“They’ve been asleep at the wheel as far as my government is concerned,” the 50-year-old centre-Right politician said.

“I really think our taoiseach will have to stand up here, sooner rather than later, because we’re going to have more protests. We’re going to have much more anti-immigrant sentiment.”

Last week, six people were arrested after police were attacked by protestors at a site for asylum seekers in County Wicklow after a string of arson attacks at other centres.

There were also far-Right anti-migrant riots in Dublin last year, the capital of a country in the grips of a housing crisis in which asylum seekers are now being housed in tents.

Mr Blaney, now a senator, was previously the MP for a Donegal constituency where one person in every 100 is an asylum seeker and which borders Northern Ireland. His party, Fianna Fáil, is part of the coalition government in Dublin.

Senator Blaney spoke to The Telegraph amid a diplomatic row between taoiseach Simon Harris and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, triggered by Irish claims that up to 90 per cent of asylum seekers arriving in Dublin had crossed the open border with Northern Ireland.

He insisted that an agreement linked to the more than a century-old Common Travel Area between the two countries would eventually allow Dublin to return migrants to the UK.

But he said It was the impact on services such as healthcare and education that was a “much bigger problem” than Mr Sunak’s insistence that Britain would not take any asylum seekers back.

“It’s the amount of migrants that have come over the last two years,” he said.

“It’s impacting our schools, so there’s no room left in primary schools and secondary schools. It’s severely impacting the health services and access to them. It’s the most vulnerable people who are being impacted first.”

He added, “Some of the handouts that have been given to people coming from countries that are actually safe are also driving major anti-immigration sentiment.”

In January, government figures revealed Donegal was hosting 1,641 asylum seekers. The county in the north of the island had the highest concentration of asylum seekers, with 1,004  per 100,000 people, or one person in every 100.

Donegal also hosts 5,259 Ukrainian refugees, which is 8.9 per cent of the Ukrainian population currently in Ireland, which has welcomed more than 100,000 people fleeing Vladimir Putin’s invasion.

Migrants were not crossing into Donegal from Northern Ireland, Senator Blaney said, but heading to the International Protection Office in Dublin to claim asylum. From there, they can be sent to places around Ireland.

By April 12, more than 6,000 people had applied for asylum in Ireland, which has a population of about 5.1m people, this year.

If that rate continues, Ireland will have a record number of more than 20,000 asylum claims by the end of 2024. The previous record was 13,000 in 2004.

Senator Blaney wants Mr Harris, the leader of Fine Gael, to “show leadership” by ordering an analysis of all the Irish counties, identify which towns are “full” and either fund them or designate that they cannot take any more migrants.

He warned that immigration had the potential to be the “number one” issue in the European elections, which will precede an Irish general election Sinn Féin is predicted to win ahead of both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil.

He admitted that Ireland had a healthy budget surplus but the money had not been ploughed into services.

“I’m not about to kick the backside of my colleagues and government. I’m just asking them to step up and take responsibility and look after our people,” he told The Telegraph.

“What’s happening at the moment is driving anti-immigration sentiment and it’s dangerous, to say the least, to not deal with it.”