“Clonmel Concerned Residents Group” is a Racist Fraud

(I have written a short(er) update to this story.)

The short version: a small group of agitators calling themselves the Clonmel Concerned Residents Group includes at least two deranged, racist conspiracy theorists who have both spoken for the group on local radio station Tipp FM, called Dee Dempsey and David Moloney. Dempsey is, to the best of my knowledge, an actual resident of Clonmel, and believes, among other things, that the Irish government is being directly controlled by Israel, and that housing for refugees is part of a Zionist plan to replace white Irish people with foreign settlers. Moloney is the operator of the Facebook page “Clonmel Concerned Residents Group”, official voice of the group and their campaign, even though he’s from Tipp Town, and has no connection to Clonmel whatsoever, by his own admission. He believes there’s a secret plan to construct a detention centre for asylum seekers in Clonmel, and claims he was personally told of this plan by Mattie McGrath, TD. At time of writing, Mattie McGrath has not responded to an email asking if he told Moloney this, and refused to give a straight answer to other questions about his communication with Moloney and the CCRG’s request for a list of buildings and sites in and around Clonmel that may be used as housing for refugees.

These people claim to speak for the residents of Clonmel, and particularly of the housing estates and halting site adjacent to a parcel of HSE-owned land on Heywood Road where the Department of Integration plans to build 82 modular homes to house currently homeless refugees from the war in Ukraine. They don’t speak for those people, and they know they don’t speak for those people. They’re being dishonest about the reasons for their opposition to the development, which is actually rooted in ludicrous conspiracy theories they are too cowardly to be upfront about. They’re deceiving people about this in part to recruit others with more sincere concerns into their campaign and use their well-meaning involvement as a shield against accurate criticism of the racist, conspiracist core of the group. They’ve begun going door-to-door with a petition in Clonmel, though they haven’t said what the petition is actually asking for on their Facebook page, and they definitely haven’t told anyone who’s signed the petition so far who they’re really signing up with.

In my opinion, that makes them liars and frauds. They should not be trusted or treated as a credible voice on these issues, and they definitely should not be amplified further by local media, who have already done a very disappointing job covering their activities. I don’t know the appropriate way to address what concerns surely do exist in Clonmel and in the vicinity of the site about this development, and I won’t pretend I do. But I am absolutely certain that this group is not acting with the interests of the town or its people in mind, and you shouldn’t buy whatever shit they’re selling.

If you want to know how I came to this conclusion, and see my evidence for my claims, you can read the full story below.

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Last week, I was disappointed to read a story posted on the website of my local radio station, Tipp FM: “Locals fear Clonmel modular homes will house International Protection Applicants” (23/04/24). You see, a handful of people had shown up outside a parcel of land that has been announced as a site for 82 modular homes for refugees and put up three shit signs, the shittest and most unsettling of which promised there would “be big trouble” if the plan was not abandoned (a photo of the sign is the header on the article). I’d already seen photos of their demonstration online, but I’d not heard that they were calling themselves “Clonmel Concerned Residents Group”, or that one of them had been interviewed earlier that day on Tipp FM’s flagship show, Tipp Today, as quoted in the article. I immediately clocked their incredibly vague name as suspicious, and decided to search for any trace of them on the Internet or social media before that day. My web searches returned only one result: the article I had just read. Irritated by what seemed like my local radio station falling for fairly obvious efforts by racist agitators to pass off their bigotry as concern, I wrote the following comment under the story on Facebook:

“Here lads, just wondering, do ye think ye have any responsibility to make sure the “Clonmel Concerned Residents Group” actually exists and isn’t just a name made up by a handful of local racists to barely disguise their obvious hate campaign as something more palatable? I’m just wondering because searching for this group on the Internet only turns up this article, so it kind of seems like me checking that just now involved more actual journalism than went into this article.”

Personally, as far as Facebook comments go, I think this is pretty good, and as I write this a week later, I feel pretty good about it. But right after posting it, doubts started to creep in. I’m not someone who’s comfortable just throwing out false accusations, and while I had literally zero doubt whatsoever that I was right about the racists, I worried I’d been too harsh on Tipp FM. Maybe it isn’t so obvious if you’re not a mildly paranoiac and deeply cynical crank like me, brain steeped in years of research into both conspiracy theories and real conspiracies, and the adjacent growth and development of far-right extremism over the last ten years. (I’m not an expert, to be clear, I’ve just followed the work of some journalists and researchers in these areas, read coverage, listened to podcasts, watched documentaries, even picked up a book or two.) I felt bad for assuming that Tipp FM could have reached my conclusion on their own and publicly lambasting them for not doing basic journalism when I hadn’t even checked if basic journalism would have worked.

Of course, I’m not a journalist and I have no journalistic training except maybe a couple of classes on reportage from the non-fiction semester of my creative writing degree. I did a bit of student journalism in university, but it was mostly criticism and commentary, and I wrote for a couple of wrestling news websites a few years ago, but I’d never investigated a story before. But I had a phone, an Internet connection and nothing better to do, apparently, so I decided to do some snooping and see what I came up with.

Before I go any further, I want to stress again that I’m not a journalist, but that I also did not therefore approach this as if I had no ethical obligations towards the subjects of what has, to my surprise, become an investigation. I’ve learned a number of interesting things about a number of interesting people over the last few days, but I don’t think that simply because I know something, I have a right to share it here, publicly. I am a conscientious objector from public shaming for its own sake, particularly of people who aren’t public figures, and while I could name and shame plenty of vile racists I’ve come across in my journey, I won’t. Quite apart from my personal feelings on public shaming, I can’t guarantee this post won’t garner media attention. I assume it won’t, obviously, but the most random shit on the Internet gets turned into “news” all the time, and I refuse to, even very indirectly, serve up other people for the Two Minutes Hate just because they’re pieces of shit. I decided very early on that I would focus my attention on two people who seemed, for lack of a better term, fair game:

1. Dee Dempsey, interviewed by Fran Curry on Tipp Today on the 23rd of April and quoted in the article

2. David Moloney, operator of the Facebook page “Clonmel Concerned Residents Group”, created two days after I pointed out no trace of the group existed online

Two men claiming membership of the group were briefly interviewed in the field prior to Fran’s interview with Dee Dempsey, but I’m choosing to largely brush over them for the minute. The first, Martin Murphy, is a member of the Irish Freedom Party, who I feel no need to prove are a racist organisation, and he just says outright he’s not actually a concerned resident of Clonmel. The other man doesn’t offer his name, but does a good job of not letting on that his motivations are bigoted right until he starts talking about how society descends into chaos when too many different cultures live together, which is such a classic racist thing to say. I take it at face value that he’s both from Clonmel and a racist. Nothing too exciting there.

Dee Dempsey is a bit more interesting. It took no effort whatsoever on my part to find out what her deal is, because she also commented on Tipp FM’s Facebook post, accusing them of gaslighting people or something. I clicked onto her profile and immediately it was almost all conspiracy theory videos from TikTok, including some from Dee’s own account. I’ve never used TikTok before, but I downloaded it to have a gander at what she was posting and it was basically as bad as I expected. I don’t want to litigate anything she merely shared, so here’s some shit she said of her own accord while recording herself, then posted online for others to see. Once again, I take it at face value that she’s both from Clonmel and a racist, and also a conspiracy theorist fluent in delusion. I have linked my unedited screen recordings of each video cited, for anyone who might worry I’m misrepresenting her.

Dee believes the Irish government is under the direct control of Israel, and that immigration into Ireland, including our acceptance of refugees and asylum seekers, is part of a Zionist plan to replace white Irish people with foreign invaders. She has repeatedly compared this “plantation” to the Israeli settlement of Palestine. She claims Roderic O’Gorman, the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, is trafficking children through state services for an international human trafficking and child abuse ring, including deliberately placing children in the care of pedophiles. She believes the weather is being controlled with chemicals “farted out by the planes”, because recently it was raining heavily on an otherwise sunny day. She thinks Michelle Obama is secretly transgender. I’m not even describing every conspiracy theory she promotes in the videos I’ve linked, these are just some highlights, and a fraction of the shite she’s posted on her TikTok just recently.

So yeah, it didn’t take me too long to find evidence that Dee is perhaps not a credible voice on the issues here, but then, I have no idea about the editorial process that put her on the air that day. It would be unfair to speculate on whether Tipp FM should have been able to so easily identify her as a delusional conspiracist. She doesn’t particularly come off as a crank as both paraphrased and quoted in the article:

Dee Dempsey from the Clonmel Concerned Residents Group says locals need to be consulted on the plans.

She outlined on Tipp Today earlier what they hope to achieve.

“First and foremost to stop this happening without reasonable conversation, meetings and the people of the town and the residents especially around in the four housing estates and the halting site – that these unknown individuals would become their new neighbours.

“These people are genuinely concerned and they do not consent to this happening without any information being given.”

Dee Dempsey also claims Travellers have acquired squatters rights over the parcel of land as they have been grazing their horses there for years.

“The trouble will be that for 35 years the horses have been on that field giving these Travellers – they have the right, they actually have squatters rights – they have rights to the land legally.”

The entire article is only 227 words, and the latter two-thirds of it are devoted entirely to what Dee Dempsey said on Tipp Today. But that surely couldn’t be all she said. So, I listened to all 18 or so excruciating minutes of her interview on Tipp Today. Fran Curry initially introduces her as the leader of Clonmel Concerned Residents Group, but she immediately corrects him: she is leader of nothing, and there are no leaders here, just individuals coming together. A fine start. But it’s not long before she’s into conspiratorial speculation, citing the low number of Ukrainian refugees in this year’s reported numbers as proof the residents of the planned site will really be Nigerian, Somalian, Algerian, etc., even though obviously the priority for new housing for asylum seekers would be the hundreds of homeless asylum seekers who arrived in previous years, not the most recent. She says at different times, and sometimes at the same time, that she is both speaking for the local residents and trying to reach out to get them involved. She puts her words in all their mouths, claiming her fears are their fears as she rants about “unvetted” this and “military-aged males” that, totally disconnected from the reality of the situation, even when Fran occasionally tries to bring it back around.

There’s a bit where she starts talking about the importance of listening to true “natives” of Clonmel, a word she uses throughout the interview, but here specifies as meaning people with grandparents, great-grandparents and “bloodlines” stretching back in the area. If that wasn’t already dodgy as fuck, she says this when asked if her group are working with the Travellers on the halting site, racism against whom is so often based on their alleged lack of connection to the areas in which they live. It makes her cynical claims about supporting the Travellers’ access to the land even harder to swallow. The agitation of “concerned residents” is the primary weapon used to obstruct the development of decent halting sites for Travellers all over this country, where county councils routinely return their entire budget for halting site maintenance to the government, unspent, and this kind of rhetoric and activism is in direct continuity with that long and shameful tradition of willfully neglecting the needs of Travellers in this country.

But the most shocking moments of the interview really start coming once Fran asks about the sign threatening “big trouble” if refugees are housed on the land. Dee immediately says it means “legal action” and tries to stop Fran asking his question, even though it turns out his question was just to ask her what it means. Then, instead of sticking with her initial claim that it means “legal action”, she instead says that it can be interpreted as anything, then pivots again to her talking points about the halting site. Fran eventually asks if it means violence, as many locals have interpreted it, myself included. She tries to wriggle off the hook, but when pressed by Fran, she first says “No, it, well, it does not mean violence unless…”, then cuts herself off and says “it does not mean violence”. When Fran asks about that “unless”, she accuses him of “trying to provoke violence out of me”.

The interview quickly goes downhill from here, with a whole bit where she invents a whole corrupt land transfer conspiracy out of thin air, claiming the site was previously announced as a site for social housing that was never built, so how could the HSE possibly own it now. I have no idea if there really was meant to be social housing on the site, but obviously if it was never built, I’d imagine the answer is the HSE also owned it back then and still own it now precisely because no social housing was ever built on it. When Fran asks what they’ll do next, she says they’re willing to stand down if there’s consultation or something, though Fran points out there were very few people at the protest in the first place. She goes into the usual “silent majority” spiel about how most people agree with her, only they’re too afraid of the controlled media “who gaslight and blacklist and name-call” people for taking a stand or whatever. Fran asks if she thinks Tipp FM do that, and says she does, and that the media is gagged by the powers that be, claiming they are not allowed to cover crime and the rate of crime. Fran immediately points out that Tipp Today actually do a fortnightly segment where Gardaí are brought on to talk about recent crime reports. He wishes her well as he tries to bring the interview to an end, though she insists on giving a closing monologue in which she says, successively, that the people in the housing estates around the site are mostly in their thirties to early forties, that there will be no violence, and that her group are not “protesting”, they’re just demanding action from public officials and politicians.

I encourage you to scroll up and see how the content of this eighteen-minute interview on Tipp Today was summarised later the same day on Tipp FM’s website. I find the divergence between the paraphrases and quotes in the article and what Dee Dempsey actually said on air pretty incredible. I am baffled trying to imagine what kind of editorial process would take a hostile, conspiratorial interviewee who claimed Tipp FM were controlled media during her interview and summarise her so favourably in an article on their own website. If they were worried about upsetting Dee, they shouldn’t have been, since she still looked at an article that was two-thirds just paraphrasing or quoting her in the best possible light and accused them of gaslighting and distortion. I mean, I sort of agree with her, just in the exact opposite direction. How is it honest or responsible local journalism to pick the few nuggets of lucidity from an unhinged, racist rant and present them out of context as the reasonable claims of a reasonable person? I don’t understand why she was interviewed in the first place, really, and would love to know how someone decided she of all people needed eighteen minutes of airtime on one of the most popular local radio shows in the country.

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However, I’m far more concerned about David Moloney, who was also interviewed by Fran Curry on Tipp Today the day after Dee Dempsey on the 24th of April. I overlooked this interview early on in my search: at first, I was just trying to figure out who was operating the “Concerned Clonmel Residents Group” page that appeared on Facebook on the 25th of April. It didn’t take long to crack the case, since David Moloney loves to copy and paste his posts over and over on different pages and comments sections, and the CCRG Facebook page reused some of his posts, including what seem to be bespoke racist memes of Moloney’s own creation. I also very quickly found his Twitter by searching phrases from his posts, where he likes to just copy and paste his posts over and over even more, it turns out. But you can’t just know the answer, you have to show your work when making a claim like this, and I didn’t feel confident I could say this page was created by and at least primarily operated by David Moloney, if not exclusively, on this evidence alone. I had to figure out where the CCRG, the actual group of people, however small, came from if I was going to connect Moloney to the page definitively. It turns out I needn’t have bothered. I asked a question on the Clonmel Concerned Residents Group page regarding an alleged British TV crew coming to town, and David forgot to switch accounts before replying to me. He then deleted my comments and limited further comments on the post, only I’d taken a screenshot, clearly, so I messaged to ask if I could take his replies as an admission he was operating the page. I’ve received no response to my question at time of writing, but he has seen the message. I think the answer is pretty clear.

However, I first thought the CCRG and therefore the Facebook page might have emerged from a Facebook group called “concerned clomnel residence” with thousands of members, though it was hard to tell because there were so many spam and scam posts at the top of the page when I first checked. I eventually learned that this was actually a long-standing community news group for the town, maintained and managed for years by local activists, taken over by a chancer who kicked the other admins out, renamed the page to reflect the campaign’s (albeit with spelling errors), and allowed the CCRG to use it as a platform, with the CCRG page cross-posting a number of their deranged, racist posts into the group. Existing members of the group who challenged them on this, pushed back on racist and conspiracist posts or dared to address the CCRG page directly as “David” were mocked, threatened or banned. The original admin has since regained control of the group, deleted all the shit that was posted in the meantime and frozen it until Facebook allows the name to be changed back in a month’s time. I’m hopeful the group can bounce back from the CCRG’s actions and continue to serve the area for years to come, but it was a bit of a dead end for me.

I spent days monitoring the page as it made more and more unhinged posts, claiming that unspecified “local bad actors” were deliberately importing “large numbers of unvetted foreign men” as part of some sinister plot, and even that local sports clubs are being paid off by corrupt politicians in exchange for housing refugees. This is a clear reference to Clonmel Rugby Club, whose grounds are also adjacent to the site, but who don’t get mentioned much by the “concerned residents”, presumably because their chairman said in a public statement that the club has no problem with the development itself, stressing a commitment to inclusivity and diversity, though they are frustrated with the lack of consultation, particularly since they’ve previously made efforts to expand their facilities onto the land and received no response. Moloney reckons this makes them “Enemies of Clonmel” who must be boycotted and blacklisted, along with “all business and individuals that work against Clonmel and disregard residents’ concerns”. Many, maybe most, posts made from this page have since been deleted, as have almost all comments made on the remaining posts. Evidently they got a notion to start cleaning up their image.

But, to me, the most disturbing thing about the CCRG is still their central public demand as an “organisation”, at least as far as their Facebook page goes. They have asked for “a list of all the buildings and sites in and around Clonmel that have been offered [or accepted] to house asylum seekers and refugees”. If asking to receive a list of where people these racist fucks view as invaders and undesirables might live doesn’t sound Gestapo enough for you as is, let’s not forget there’s already been an appalling number of arson attacks on buildings that racists reckoned – often incorrectly – were going to be used as housing for refugees in the last six years, as recounted here in the Journal and the Irish Examiner. This is a list whose only possible uses are sinister, whether it’s to pressure and threaten site owners not to house refugees, to damage or destroy the sites themselves, or to surveil, harass and threaten any refugees who live on them in the future.

I would like to stress again at this point that David Moloney is from Tipperary Town, and has no connection to Clonmel, yet he has appointed himself the grand crusader for the people of the town against the imaginary foreign hordes. He and his bigoted buddies talk about a lack of consultation to cynically exploit real frustration about the Irish government’s general lack of transparency, but they’re not even calling for a consultative process. They want a list of targets, because they don’t give a shit about Clonmel or its people, and they’ll happily brand anyone in Clonmel an enemy of the town if they disagree with the CCRG in any way.

Until a couple of months ago, David seemed to mainly focus on road safety issues surrounding the development of the N24 in and around Tipperary Town. Here’s an article quoting him on this issue in the Irish Independent last year. Here’s an interview he gave about it on Tipp FM. I don’t know the details of his road safety campaign, but at some point the county council asked him to stop sending them harassing communications, which he seems to be very unhappy about. Most public posts in public Facebook groups by David Moloney I could find concerned road safety before this year, but some time in the last several months he started to post increasingly bizarre and racist things about refugees in Ireland. I presume his road safety activism is how he first came into contact with Mattie McGrath, who became the third subject of my investigation on the 29th of April when the CCRG page posted the following:

“Hearrn’s Hotel & Asylum seekers

Mattie just now contacted me to say.

You will recall that a statement from the Hearrn’s Hotel vehemently denied any plans to use this property for IPAS accommodation, however, it appears that negotiations remain ongoing and will not be made public until a decision has been made and contract has been signed and I just wanted to bring this matter to your attention.”

(The post has since been deleted, but my screenshot hasn’t, nor has this version posted in another Facebook group, at time of writing.)

I emailed Mattie McGrath to ask if he really contacted this page and if this was really what he said. I don’t feel like summarising my entire exchange with Mattie, so you can just read it here (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7). He refused to give me a straight answer to my initial question, claiming his contacts with constituents are confidential, even if they post their contents in public it seems. (I assume Mattie will similarly refuse to confirm or deny that he has been in contact with me, even though I’m publishing our entire email exchange.) By the time he came back with that answer though, the “Enemies of Clonmel” shit on the CCRG page had really kicked into high gear, so I also asked if he supported boycotting and blacklisting local businesses. He said he was opposed to such actions, although he also said he “would ask all businesses in the town to work with their communities and in the best interest of their communities where possible”. Or, to put it another way, “nice business you got there, sure would be a shame if something happened to it”, but no, Mattie definitely doesn’t support attacking local busineses.

Naturally, though, he saved his vaguest answer for my very direct questions on whether he supports the CCRG’s request for a list of sites and buildings that might house refugees in the future, and whether he would provide them with such a list if the Department of Integration didn’t. I have a very, very, very low opinion of Mattie McGrath, the dancing jester of the Irish far right. But I have to be honest, it did kind of shock me that he wouldn’t even pretend that he wouldn’t give this shower of racist bastards a list of targets if he had the chance. He has not responded, at time of writing, to my last two emails. The second last pressed him again on questions he previously dodged, and I was furious when I wrote it, as you can tell from all the righteous indignation. The last one asked him a new question, and I was laughing really hard when I wrote it, because you don’t get to ask a question like this every day. I would happily give up the answers to every other question I’ve raised throughout my investigation if Mattie would just honestly answer this one:

Did Mattie McGrath tell David Moloney that there’s a secret plan to build a massive detention centre for asylum seekers on the Heywood Road?

You see, I did eventually find that interview David Moloney did on Tipp Today the day after Dee and while he said a lot of stupid, racist, crazy shit I could summarise here, I only care about one part at this point. The part where he says he’s heard the site on Heywood Road isn’t going to be used for modular homes at all, but is actually going to be the future site of a massive detention centre for asylum seekers. Fran Curry says he hasn’t heard anything of the sort, and David says he should talk to Mattie McGrath. Fran says he talks to Mattie often and he’s never told Fran of such a plan. David then says, affirmatively, that Mattie McGrath told him about this detention centre, and when Fran asks again did Mattie McGrath tell you this, he confirms, yes, Mattie McGrath told him this.

As I said, Mattie McGrath has not yet responded to an email asking him to confirm or deny if he told David Moloney of a secret plan to build a detention centre for asylum seekers in Clonmel. I am not surprised by Mattie’s silence. He was in the Dáil this morning, for one, so he’s a little busy, but also he definitely does not want to answer my question. If he does anyway, I will update this post to include his response. But if I’m not surprised at all by Mattie’s silence, I am gobsmacked that a man claiming to speak for a local activist group told Fran Curry on air that Mattie McGrath told him of a secret plan to build a detention centre for asylum seekers in Clonmel and Tipp FM apparently have absolutely nothing to say about it, no questions to put to Mattie. Since this interview aired, all they’ve posted about either party is another story that was essentially just a press release for the CCRG about their latest protest on the 27th of April and a story about Mattie’s opposition to the EU Migration Pact. I am genuinely stunned that a journalistic outlet could have a story like this drop into their lap, whether Moloney is lying or not, and apparently pass up the chance to look into it at all. I’ve had my issues with Tipp FM and how they cover local news over the years, but this really shook my confidence in them, I have to say.

I hope this suffices as a summary of my investigation, findings and evidence for the people in my community the CCRG are attempting to deceive, and that you will join me in shutting the door in their face should they come knocking. However, I want to bring up just one more of the many interesting things I found while researching this piece. As far as I can tell, even the very first public meeting in this campaign, on the 20th of April, was instigated not by any concerned resident of Clonmel, but by… David Moloney. All the way back on the 17th of April in the comments section of a Tipp FM Facebook post soliciting opinions on the announced plan for the modular homes, David Moloney posted a date, time and location for his planned protest, saying “I am looking for help in organising this, I would like to see it started and for locals to take over organising it. I think it is important to kick it off”, with an image captioned “TIPPERARY CONCERNED CITIZENS”. Moloney has not insinuated himself into a group of existing concerned residents. The entire campaign has been driven from the very start by a disgruntled racist and conspiracy theorist from another town, and he started his campaign in the comments section of Tipp FM’s own Facebook page, right under their noses. Mattie McGrath spoke at that first meeting, evidently accepting Moloney’s invitation.

Everything I’ve told you since then, all the delusion and lies and conspiracy theories and threats, it all follows from that moment. And I don’t think I’ve uncovered anything close to the full story. Moloney isn’t given to making overt threats as far as I can tell, but he loves to tell people that their details have been shared in “the WhatsApp” with the implication he and his pals will keep an eye on them in the future, and maybe hurt them if they’re not careful. He has said this group has over 100 members, which I find very interesting given they’ve yet to field more than two dozen people at any of their protests. He’s also announced his plan to “name and shame” a “local keyboard warrior” at their next public meeting in Clonmel tomorrow, with accompanying screenshots of a Twitter account who pissed him off by tweeting about the takeover of the community Facebook group, and the local “Clonmel Says No” anti-austerity Facebook group. I know for a fact that Twitter user has nothing to do with the Clonmel Says No page and I know for a fact that the admin of the Clonmel Says No page is not that Twitter user. Neither of them has done anything to warrant being “named and shamed” by this racist agitator prick except dare to object to his disgusting public behaviour, nor have any of the other people Moloney has threatened similarly. I presume my details will now be shared in the WhatsApp too. I won’t pretend it doesn’t give me pause about publishing this, but I’ve decided to do it anyway because I think people in my community should know about these liars. I can’t help but feel there are plenty of local media organisations in Tipperary who could have done it first, but it is what it is. If only I could have dealt with the David Moloney who made “no accusations or hate speech” the only rule of his road safety campaign group!

I’d also like to say that I obviously do not think anyone who has any concerns about the planned modular homes is necessarily a racist, and there are plenty of legitimate reasons you could oppose their placement on this site. However, if you would be fine with modular homes if they were built as temporary accommodation for homeless Irish people, I would suggest that’s pretty definitionally prejudicial. You hear all the time from people who oppose housing refugees in this country how it’s disgraceful to house refugees and not our own homeless. But that’s bullshit. It is disgraceful not to house our homeless regardless of any other issue because everyone deserves a home as a basic human right. Our government could already be housing every homeless person in Ireland – including the many homeless refugees and asylum seekers living on our streets – if they wanted to. They don’t want to.

They have been deliberately not resolving the housing crisis in this country for years because it’s the constant competition for not enough housing that keeps rents high and the landlords happy. The housing crisis is not a failure of government policy, it is the policy, and if that pisses you off like it pisses me off, then good, it should, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with refugees and asylum seekers. If we were taking in no refugees and asylum seekers, our government would still not house the homeless. Also, has everyone just forgotten that despite announced plans to end direct provision by 2024 – “quietly shelved” according to the Irish Times – the Irish asylum system is a fucking horror-show of deprivation, neglect and abuse in which dozens of people have died? Every homeless person in Ireland and every person who comes here seeking asylum deserve the security and dignity of a safe, warm and stable home, and we get no closer to achieving either by pitting their needs against each other.

Solidarity forever.