A video was widely shared on social media showing women being harassed by a group of men – believed to be asylum seekers – who were also engaging in threatening and abusive behaviour on College Square in recent days.
According to the Department of Children, Equality Disability, Integration, and Youth there are almost 600 International Protection applicants (asylum seekers) living in various accommodation centres in Killarney.
Outside of Dublin, county Kerry has the highest number of refugees and asylum seekers nationally which currently stands at 4,708.
The town has hosted International Protection seekers for the best part of 20 years but that has increased dramatically in recent weeks due to the Government’s commitment to house an uncapped number of refugees.
There was widespread controversy last month when Ukrainian families were given 48 hours’ notice to leave a hotel to make way for hundreds of male asylum seekers.
After a public outcry, the decision to move the Ukrainian families was reversed.
However, it has since transpired that the 217 male asylum seekers were also taken into a hotel in town, as well as 100 women and children.
“Nowhere else would take the asylum seekers, no one,” Mayor Niall Kelleher told this week’s Killarney Municipal District meeting.
Since the arrival of the most recent group of International Protection seekers locals have expressed their concerns for their own safety.
Several readers have contacted the Killarney Advertiser outlining their concerns while several more have been in touch with their local councillors.
“They [the new arrivals] are the ones causing all the trouble. They are not respecting our town. There are people afraid to walk down the Park Road,” Cllr Donal Grady told the Killarney Advertiser.
“I know for a fact that there are people actually afraid to walk the streets or walk down along the road. I’m not being dramatic. I’m telling you the truth,” Cllr Marie Moloney told this week’s Killarney Municipal District meeting.
https://killarneyadvertiser.ie/news/people-now-living-in-fear/
Issues reportedly being experienced in Killarney come as authorities in Ireland make concerted efforts to loosen border restrictions on the island.
While working on getting hate speech laws passed in the country, Ireland’s Justice Minister, Helen McEntee, pushed through a near-blanket migrant amnesty allowing illegals in the country to gain permanent residency status.
Such an amnesty was made available to many migrants who even had a criminal record, with any accepted by the programme not only being granted permission to stay in the country, but being put on the pathway to gaining Irish citizenship.
The “soft touch” approach has since resulted in huge numbers of non-Ukrainian migrants claiming asylum in Ireland, with the state now struggling to house genuine Ukrainian refugees as a result of the large number of arrivals from various nations ranging from Albania and Nigeria, neither of which are active conflict zones.
Ireland’s handling of the crisis has been so poor that it has even attracted the attention of politicians abroad, with the country’s Prime Minister being chastised in the European Parliament this year for the country’s lax border policies.
“Do you think that mass amnesties for illegal migrants by EU member states is going to alleviate or worsen migration pressure on Europe?” Charlie Weimers asked the premier, telling Breitbart that the country could end up turning into a “migration Mecca” that would worsen the entire bloc’s illegal migrant problems.